I was Kindness, once.
I still can be, at times. When the creatures of my forest are injured, they call on me, and I come to them, and grant them mercy. Heal them, if they can be healed. Grant a different, sadder, mercy if they can’t be. I am the Spirit of Nature, but I am not always red in tooth and claw. I was Kindness, once, and I still am, when I can be.
I will not be tonight. I cannot be.
You have slaughtered beasts in my forest. You have killed over a hundred manticores simply to take their tails. You have brought down countless hydras for the regenerative properties of their venom, taken their fangs and venom sacs, and left their bodies to rot in my swamps. You have shot Orthroi in one head and then removed both, to show their heads off as trophies while their headless bodies bear silent witness to your crimes.
And then you shot my husband when he tried to warn you.
Oh, he’ll live. Your cold steel bullets are anathema to magic – as you well know, obviously—so you hurt him, far worse than anyone has ever done in millennia, but he’ll live, and heal. But you should have heeded his warning. You thought he was another beast that you could kill with impunity. You thought you could kill any of my beasts with impunity. You thought you could come through your portal, and kill, and kill, and then go running back to your world without magic, where no magical pony could follow and bring you to justice.
I suppose you were very surprised when my minotaur friends captured you and brought you back here. You didn’t know minotaurs existed here, did you? You didn’t know there was a creature bigger than you, stronger than you, with hands like yours that can hold your weapons, and no more dependent on magic than you are.
Perhaps it’s fortunate for you that you shot my husband, then. Or perhaps not so fortunate. It depends on what you prefer to lose. My husband would have taken your sanity, but left you in your own world, alive, as a warning to the rest of your kind. He is Chaos, you see, but he prefers the side of Chaos that doesn’t kill. He will never kill unless there is no other way.
But death is just as much a part of Nature as life is. I cannot be Kindness all the time. Sometimes I am the tooth that rends, the claws that slash. Nature is bloody and ferocious and beautiful, and so must I be.
This is the forest you despoiled by your murders. These are the creatures whose families you rent apart. And tonight, the weapons you bore when you killed the beasts of my forest have been taken from you. You will fight with nothing but the gifts Nature gave you.
Oh, stop. Your situation is far from hopeless. Nature gifted you long legs and endurance for running, didn’t it? And arms that can climb trees? And minds that can turn objects you find into weapons? The Wild Hunt disperses at sunrise. All you have to do is live from moonrise to moonset. It’s a better chance than you gave any of the beasts you killed.
I grant you a ten minute start. It’s hardly a hunt if I let them loose on you now, is it? And you hunted my beasts. You tracked them and you followed them relentlessly and when you injured them and they limped home to nurse their wounds you followed them there and killed their entire families. It’s only fair we do the same to you. Be grateful enough of me is still Kindness that I didn’t involve your families. I didn’t bring the Hunt over to your world… although I could have. Your world isn’t truly magicless, and the Wild Hunt has ridden there before. But no. I granted you the mercy you denied my creatures, and I brought you here, far from your homes, to face your punishment.
Look there, the moon is rising. It’s time for you to go.
Run.
And in ten minutes… the Wild Hunt will ride.