1 July, 2013 Who: Archeron and OPEN to any Aegis agents and characters across the Veil. Please feel free to have your characters react to what's going on. Where: Long Beach, CA → San Francisco, CA When: Shortly after midnight and into the wee hours of the morning What: The Wild Hunt comes calling for a thief
It began in Long Beach, shortly after mortal clocks registered it to be past midnight. The night was not yet deepest when the pack of hounds and horses appeared, all white to mortal eyes and white with red ears to those that could truly see. On their backs were various members of the hunt, dressed in the same red and white as their mounts, faces hidden beneath hoods of bright blood red. Their quarry was stepping into a car, all mortal grace and mortal fashions. The hounds howled and it only took a moment for quarry and any onlookers to realize that the pale creatures were after her.
With a rev of the engine, they were all off, horse and hounds moving far too fast for any mortal creature as they kept up with the fast moving car. She took the five up the coast, horse hooves loud and clattering on the asphalt. The engine revved again, the bright car speeding up the coastline and Archeron dug his heels into his mount, urging it faster, to go, go, go as the other members of the Hunt did the same. The hounds bayed and howled, the horses wickered and panted as they went streaking up mortal roads, uncaring of the picture they presented. Theirs was a duty, all encompassing and powerful, an urge that left no room for disobedience.
The pass of mortals, as cities and towns and more cars full of short lived beings, were all ignored as they snapped at the car, large bodies leaping at it, falling behind and catching up again. Up the coast they chased her, thief of a wand that belonged neither to her, nor to any of them. It would be returned, but for her crime of taking such an artifact and selfishly desiring to use it for her own benefit – she would face them all.
When the car finally stopped (hours later but only a brief passage of time to her pursuers) shuddering to a halt even as she tried to make it go and keep going when it no longer had fuel to do so, they slowed, hounds snapping at the vehicle as if urging her continue her flight. When she did not, when she stayed within, the horses began to kick at the car, hooves leaving deep imprints into the body. If she wanted to remain inside, it would be her coffin. And when Arch began to think that she might never emerge, she finally pushed the door open and fled, in tears, the stolen item in her grasp.
They were slower now, keeping pace with her, the dogs snapping at her heels, her calves, anywhere close enough to get their mouths. Foolishly she tried to use the wand in her grasp and when nothing came of it, she threw it at a passerby. The other person was of no interest, not yet, not until they had killed their quarry and sought to retrieve the item that had been wrongfully taken, but Archeron made a note of the woman before they followed the lagging footsteps of the witch.
To the very edge of the waters in the Bay they followed her and when she finally collapsed, water lapping at her bare feet (shoes having been lost somewhere along the way) they made their final advance. At the snapping teeth of the hounds and the hard hooves of the horses, she met her messy end. Once it was done, her life's blood pouring out to meet the cool waters, the Hunt began to dissipate, to return back to the places from whence they had come.
"I will retrieve it," Archeron said quietly, taking responsibility for the item that had been taken. There were no nods, but no one stopped him as a single pale horse remained from the band and he rode back to find the woman that had received the discarded wand.