| abstract
| - Balthazar the Lupe was abandoned by his family on the edge of the Haunted Woods as a child. He crawled, hungry and thirsty, through the twisted forest until he came upon a clearing. He could see purple lights in the distance - darkness faeries. As he asked for help they started to giggle, and then to cackle, and all of a sudden they started picking up stones and twigs and threw them at the poor Lupe. Balthazar had no choice but to run away, yelping and crying. He somehow managed to survive in the woods, living for years alone, and he never forgot what the faeries did to him that day... Balthazar is now a bounty hunter, capturing young faeries in his magical bottles... and selling them for huge profits. Armed with only a tightly woven net, a few empty bottles, and a sharp, toothy grin, Balthazar stalks and watches his prey through the camouflage of leaves and shadows late at night. The faeries, unaware of Balthazar as he enters their precious realm, stand guard in the trees. Their little city is full of life and joy. Balthazar cleverly cloaks himself in their midst, becoming a shadow among them, a dark ghost. They don't hear or see him, as they are all carelessly fluttering about like faeries often do. Suddenly, the hair on his back rises, his eyes turn red, his sharp teeth reflect the moonlight, and, with a leap and a swoosh of his trusty net, he bags several prize faeries at the same time. The lucky ones flee as fast as they can to the tops of the trees. They can only look on and wonder who this beast is. "Ahhh, all of you will bring me great fortune," he says, looking through his net, "not to mention the great pleasure of watching you struggle to free yourselves from my tightly sealed bottles." Quickly, he pinches them by the wings and holds them above his open bottles. One by one, he drops them in before the faeries even know what has happened. The trapped faeries try to shake the confusion out of their wings whilst they look up at the evil, greedy, grinning Balthazar. Each faerie takes a deep breath as the Lupe seals the bottles ever so tightly. "Don't worry, my little winged friends," he says without feeling, poking a few air holes into the corks with his claws. "This should keep you alive until I sell you back to Neopia. You will make me very rich. You all will...." He opens his leather satchel to reveal several other faeries that he has already caught on his hunt. "You all will make me very rich. Muahahahaha. Don't worry, you will fly again... and we will meet again. Don't you worry...." As he turns to go, he stops and looks up into the trees that are twinkling with the faeries that escaped his net. He lets out a long, echoing howl, frightening the faeries once more. "I prowl through the darkness, hunting all of you. There's no use hiding.... Your fate is sealed in my bottles!" Balthazar knows he is done for the night, sensing that the faeries are vanishing deep into the forest. Showing them where they belong, he tells them what they need to know—that he is a Lupe who hunts through the darkness, ever on alert for a faerie's fading light.
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