It was on this very night that the legend was born, or rather spawned from that dark and oft misunderstood place where vengeance readily receives its tortured followers. A knight of renown and honour had been assaulted as he rode duty-bound from dale to dale, his sense of right and wrong suddenly assailed mid-flight by a twisted thought that caused his stomach to churn and his vision to fail him. The world spiraled away, until all went black...

From the roadside two conspiring shadows awhispering descended on the fallen knight, their true intentions too vile and wretched to record in this document by this trembling hand. Suffice it that the powerfully gripping thought of sudden wealth filled their soot black hearts and overwhelmed any instinctual fears or thought of aid.

As the bandits argued heatedly amongst themselves as to how to divide the windfall, the twisted path they knelt upon began to darken unnaturally. From the root and trunk of the darkening woods to their sides then came a searching mist, clinging to the leaf-strewn ground like some slithering thing...

Then the silence descended upon them, as winged and clawed witnesses alike held their breath.

The two bandits slowly turned, suddenly sensing that their plunder had not gone unnoticed. Within the mist, and down the haunted road, they heard the deep guttural objections of a restrained beast, and then the clomp of shodden hoofs upon the hardened earth of a well travelled road.

Wide-eyed and stricken, the bandits stood frozen, caught between the instinctual impulse to run and the deadly lure of the heretofore unseen.

Slowly the mist parted and gave way to a blackened form, riding high in the saddle upon a spirited mount of animated silhouette. The shadowy steed rose up on its powerful hind legs, its only discernible features a coat of shining blue-black the hue of raven's feathers, and burning eyes of hot-coal red. Towering above the thieves, a dark rider adorned in flowing robes of tattered sable checked the reins and set his cold gaze, hidden behind a helm of unpolished iron, upon the ice-footed brigands.

The singing grind of steel slowly released broke the ominous silence, as the dark rider's twisted blade was held high to point skyward...