Maskbound: The Ultimate Hunter

Zinnia’s fingers closed hard on his sleeve as the waltz swelled, the whole ballroom turning slowly in unison. In the glass the same crowd turned a half step late, as though something else were leading them.

“Every reflection is behind the music, my father’s included,” she said under her breath.

“Mine isn’t behind anything, it’s somewhere else entirely,” Nilo said.

Nilo searched the nearest panel for himself, finding the borrowed jacket first, then the empty collar. Where his face belonged there was only bare skin, blank as an egg, nothing at all.

[ WARDROBE ]

[Mirror reading: Seat open]

[Face: none]

[Source: unknown]

‘I always knew nobody could hold my face, I just never saw the gap from the outside.’

Jingles whispered from the rack, “I know that blankness, please stop looking at it, please.”

“Young man, avert your eyes from that glass, I forbid it,” Clangor said stiffly.

Cadenza sighed in the dark, “Darling, the mirror is staging you, you have not read the script.”

“Not your face,” Zilch said flatly.

The blank figure in the glass lifted one hand to its cheek, a full second before he moved. Then it pressed the other palm flat against the inside of the mirror, politely testing a locked door.

He stepped back one pace, the figure staying exactly where it was.

“What is it doing?” Zinnia asked, her voice dropping, her fingers pale on his sleeve.

“Taking its time… I don’t like the polite ones.”

A scream tore across the ballroom from the north wall, the quartet stumbling into a very thin silence. A man in a Viper’s gray coat stood frozen before a panel, both hands clutching his face tightly.

“My mask is coming off without me—” he gasped.

In the glass behind him, a gloved hand rose out of his reflection, pinching the rim of his mask. With one pull it slid free like a card from a deck, leaving his features blank as river stone.

The man folded to the floor without a sound, as though a string was cut.

Matron Ilse knelt beside him, silver doves glinting on her apron, her calm hands hovering over him. Captain Wavecrest planted himself at her back, a buffet carving knife looking tiny in his huge fist.

“Nobody touches the glass near this man,” the Matron ordered, “I have seen this wound before, it does not bleed.”

“Then I will stand here and look fierce, it is my other talent,” the Captain rumbled.

Every joke in Nilo’s head stopped at once, as if someone cut the wire cleanly with shears. On the bandolier Jingles froze mid pun, Clangor fell silent, Zilch swung slowly toward the north wall.

“Everyone behind me,” he said, level and low.

Zinnia snapped the fox mask over her eyes, gold whiskers flaring across her cheeks, “Reynard.”

Nilo was already moving, feet skidding on the mirror bright floor as guests scattered like startled birds. He caught the Viper before the man hit the tiles, cradling his head gently against one forearm.

“Stay with me, look at me, what is your name?” he asked.

“Tomas Reeve… it asked me to smile, so I smiled.”

His eyes kept searching for the ceiling, set in a face with every feature smoothed away. Nilo held him carefully, the way you hold a child who has stopped crying too soon.

“Pipa, get a medic through the kitchen, Ganzo, we have the first one,” he said into his collar.

“Chat, I am so sorry, I am cutting the stream now,” Pipa whispered from somewhere near the pillars.

Bruno planted himself between the glass and the wounded man, shoulders square, “Nobody gets cut tonight, that was the promise.”

“The glass is the weapon, he never touches the person, he touches the reflection,” Zinnia said, scanning the walls.

“Then we stop giving him reflections to hold.”

Bruno turned to the nearest panel and swung a fist at his own reflection, intending to shatter the problem. The glass swallowed his arm to the elbow, rippling like water, then a gloved hand clamped his wrist tightly.

“It has me, it is pulling… Nilo, it is going for my horns—”

Nilo flicked the iron helm over his face, plate rolling across his coat, the greatsword slamming into his grip. One cut through the panel sent silver shards spraying across the floor, the grip on Bruno vanishing at once.

“I accept your challenge, glass,” he heard himself say, wincing inside the helm.

“Young man, you cannot refuse a mirror, it is the principle of the thing,” Clangor said proudly.

A flick of his wrist sent the helm back to its hook, plate melting into silk while Bruno stared.

“Thank you… I will say it exactly once, and never again.”

“Say it twice, I’ll put it on your tab,” Nilo said.

Across the Hall every door swung shut at once, the heavy bolts sliding home with a sound like gunfire. Guests screamed and shoved toward the exits while a cello rolled across the floor, humming its last note alone.

“Do not touch the glass, I repeat, do not touch the glass!” the Master of the Gilded Foxes roared from the balcony.

From the kitchen corridor came a thud like a boulder dropping, then another, shaking the chandeliers in their chains. The great doors held, but a thin line of plaster dust sifted down from the lintel over the crowd.

Ganzo’s bellow came muffled through the wall, “Children, the kitchen door is locked, a locked door is merely a polite suggestion.”

“Captain, the Hall locked itself, hit it harder,” Pipa said into her brooch.

“Harder it is, stand back from the wall, I am about to be rude to some architecture.”

Lord Steelhorn cleared his throat, a sound that made a thousand frightened guests stop and listen. Years of commanding rhino charges lent his voice a weight that no mirror could easily fracture.

“Center floor, three paces from every wall, civilians inside the ring, Hunters on the outside,” Lord Steelhorn ordered.

“Father, that was actually competent,” Bruno said, blinking.

“I have commanded larger crowds than this at lesser funerals.”

At the far wall Lord Steelhorn stood rigid before his reflection, which wore a rhino helm cracked down the middle. Bruno saw the same thing and started toward him, forgetting every rule of the floor in a single long stride.

“Father, get away from that panel—”

“A Steelhorn does not run from a looking glass,” his father said stiffly.

“A Steelhorn does not stand in front of one either, please move, I would like a father at breakfast.”

The old man blinked at his son, then stepped sideways with great dignity, as though it was planned all along.

Along the east wall the panels began to ripple one after another, like a pond struck by a stone. Dessa Crane stepped slowly away from them, one hand drifting calmly to the folded glass wings at her hip.

“Darling, those panels were not rippling when I arrived, I have remarkably good eyes for ripples,” she said lightly.

Zinnia shouted, “Dessa, move away from the glass!”

“I intend to, I only wanted to see who was knocking, one likes to greet company at the door.”

The central mirror bulged outward like a soap bubble stretched past its limit, then burst without a sound. A figure stepped through as easily as through a curtain, his shoes finding the floor with a chime.

“That is the rudest entrance I have ever witnessed,” Dessa breathed.

Around his waist hung a tailor’s apron crowded with small hooks, each one carrying a stolen mask. A tape measure draped his shoulders, shears gleaming at his belt, his face a stitched pale oval.

‘Seven masks on my bandolier, a hundred on his apron… the tailor wants the whole wardrobe.’

“Oh no, a man made of hooks, that is two of my least favorite things,” Jingles squeaked.

He bowed to the room with a tailor’s courtesy, one hand over his heart, the shears glinting in the light.

“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, forgive the interruption,” the Collector said pleasantly, “I have been measuring this room all night.”

His blank face turned slowly until it found Nilo, the tape measure unrolling by itself across the floor.

“Mister Nilo, your fitting is next.”

“You cut a man’s mask from his face in front of a thousand witnesses,” Zinnia said, her rapier rising.

“A thousand witnesses who will forget him by breakfast, Miss, it is the courtesy of the glass.”

“Then I’ll remember him for them… I’m unforgettable, ask anyone for about ten minutes,” Nilo said.

The Collector tilted his stitched face, as if admiring the cut of a sleeve, “I keep a hook on my apron that has been empty since the day you were born.”

‘A hook made for me, years ago, so someone told him I was coming.’

Jingles whimpered inside the rack, “He knows our names, he knows my name, I can hear it in the way he is not saying it.”

Zinnia’s phantom copies flickered into existence around the Hall, four slim fox shapes fanning out across the floor. Each one leveled a rapier at the Collector, steady as a metronome, daring him to pick just one.

“Whoever you are, you hung your apron in the wrong hall,” she said, her blade steady.

“Do bring your friends, the more the merrier, I measure everyone eventually, it is only a matter of thread,” the Collector said.