Something itches the back of Hood’s head - behind his ear - and he scratches it, only to scratch himself awake, though he can’t quite believe himself to be awake, for he wakes to softness, a deep comfort that he has never experienced before in his life, and, what at first, seems to be a whispering from all around him. As he stops moving, the whispers seem to desist and he realises that whatever gorgeously comfortable bedding he is surrounded by - a thick eider down quilt - was making the noise as he moved…well, mainly, for as he becomes accustomed to his surroundings, he hears a further, more insistent shhhhhhhushhing whisper, accompanied by the faint tinkling of bells.

It is clearly day time, but the sunlight is all but blocked out, leaking in as it is around the edges of thick heavy curtains covering three evenly spaced windows along the length of the external wall. The effect of this is that the room in which Hood awakes has a slightly dark grey pallor to it, and although, as his eyes become accustomed to the light, he can clearly see everything there is. The colours, muted pastels of what they would normally be.

A cascade of tinkles erupts as what appears to be the shadowed form of some antlered beast rises up above the side of Hood’s bed and looms large. Hood, wide eyed and slightly taken aback calms himself somewhat as his eyes slowly focus on Hy-Jinx’s incredibly close bespectacled face, though the spectacles themselves are skew-whiff with the bridge of Hy-Jinx’s nose.

“Hood, Hoooooood, Hoooooodikins!” Hy-Jinx says, her glazed blue eyes appearing bloodshot and even more randomly focused than usual. “Now I know you know you probably…can’t tell, shhhhh!…But I’m BLIND drunk.” Hy-Jinx’s eyes flash wider as she says this, “Literally. Blind. Drunk. First came the positive emotions” Hy-Jinx’s voice goes into a high pitched squeek on the word ‘positive’, before plunging low “and now…now I’m drowning in an ocean of confushion and malaish - the negative ee-mowshions,” before returning to her normal tones, albeit slightly slurred, laboured and full of unusual pauses. “The whole world is darkness’s…but there’s a little light shining because…alsho…I have a new..fwend…” A large smile spreads across Hy-Jinx’s face as one hand comes from below the bed-line, plopping a one-eyed teddy bear onto the quilt next to Hood’s face. “I’m not shure, sure..what to call…him. I thought maybe we should be called Gloom, and then I thought Doom…and now…now I’m thinking, thin king…huh!…that theesh…” She starts shaking her head, the bells on her hat chiming and tinkling, "theesh are not good naymsh for teddy bearth. How about…” she closes her eyes as if deep in meditative thought. “Puuuuuu-Potweazil?” Her eyes open wide again as she says this name with explosive enthusiasm, as if it’s taken a vast amount of effort to summon it forth from the recesses of her mind, but having done so, she is insanely impressed with the outcome. “I think that suitably captchuzh hij charoctor. Charack-tar”

Hood doesn’t respond - a silence Hy-Jinx takes for affirmation.

“Potweazil it ij! A one eyed bear with a shlightly salubrious pershonality but…with potenshally dark undertones,” she slurs conspiratorially with a wink. “Exjactly…exjactly like this wine.” A second hand rises from below the bed-line, holding a near empty bottle of wine which Hy-Jinx thuds down onto the bed next to Potweazil. “Bottle number two by the way. One, one should never be drunk alone,” she lifts and thuds the bottle again. “But two? Maybe I mishtralainted that pieshe of adviiise. I meant mishtranslated. Lost at shee…Lost is she you shee in mishtranslatenment. I mean…you know what I mean.” Another large smile widens Hy-Jinx’s face as lifting Potweazil by the neck she pushes him into Hood’s face. “Squidgy squidgy,” she says before sinking back beneath the bed-line, lying down on the floor, clutching both the bottle and Potweazil to her chest. “Ahhhh!” She says, breathing slowly, the room spinning slightly. “And slowly the room turns, whilst all lie still,” she commentates, “The myshterious Hood, the affaffaffable Hy-Jinx and the loveable rage that is Potweazil! Rage? I mean rogue. The loveable rogue…Potweazil! Yaaay! ”

Hood leans over the side of the bed and grabs the bottle of wine off Hy-Jinx “Not good,” he rasps, putting the bottle on the top of the side dresser above Hy-Jinx’s head. Hood rolls back into the centre of his bed, closes his eyes and mutters to himself and the two lie there, in silence, as minutes pass.

“Hood,” Hy-Jinx says eventually, righting the spectacles on the bridge of her nose. Seemingly in control of her speech again, although it doesn’t come with its usual speed, she asks: “Who was Madeleine?”

“Friend,” rasps Hood, opening his eyes and staring at the ceiling.

“No I know that, I mean who was she, before the mask, I’m guessing she wasn’t called Madeleine.” Hy-Jinx finishes the sentence with a tremendous yawn.

“Ambrosia…Clearwater”

Hy-Jinx yawns again before continuing. “Well then, we’re in her mother’s house.”

Hood takes a moment for this fact to sink in. His eyes searching the ceiling as his thoughts turn over the new information - a bizarre and strange coincidence. Hood has never met Ambrosia’s mother but knew of her, having listened to Ambrosia talk about her, quite often, after they had become good friends. That he is now in her house seems a remarkable quirk of fate, and somewhat unsettling as he is not sure how he would react to meeting her - there is so much guilt - and what would he say, what could he tell her?

Hy-Jinx’s voice drops to just above a whisper, “And could she fight? I mean, you saw her fight didn’t you? Could she fight like that when you knew her…before the mask?”

“No.”

“Cos it takes…a lot of years to learn how to fight like that and she…Did you know she could play the piano?” she continues whispering.

“No,”

“Well she can, beautifully and d’you know how I know this? Because I put the mask on and it walked over to the piano and started playing a tune that Ambrosia used to play…and before you say anything, I know I’m musically minded, but I’ve never played a piano before. And what’s weird is that we’re here now because I put the mask on earlier as well and it just…destroyed people…and then more masks came Maerin and Maeve and we exited down the sewer and met Madame Masque…and we came out in this house. According to Guild law there are five Masques who hide the Guild council…There’s supposed to be lots of council members and only a maximum of five meet at any one time…but I think that’s not true…it didn’t really make sense before since Madeleine, I mean Ambrosia, always wore that one…but then different people did wear the same ones - I mean the same mask was worn by different people at different times…but d’you know what? I think the five Masques are the guild council and it’s not that people wear the masks but the Masques wear people. And I guess you’re wanting to know why I’m whispering?”

Hood rasps a grunt.

“It’s because Masqued Madeleine is next door and I think she maybe hears and sees everything even when she’s not wearing anyone.”

Hood takes a while to process this information, thinking very carefully. Everything Hy-Jinx has said makes sense or at least some sense, and Hood remembers certain things that Madame Masque has said to him in their previous encounters: “I have my eyes,” - at the library where she seemingly knew where he was, Masqued Madeleine staring silently…but that would mean the Masques themselves could communicate with one another…perhaps over short distances, perhaps over longer stretches? “This, if the world peers close, if the world peers too closely, is what it will see - is all that it will see. This is the hand we reveal...whilst the hand that is unseen, well, let us just say: it remains unseen.” - on the canal boat beneath Kera-Bur…the hand that is unseen…Hood has thought that this was in reference to another part of the Guild, but what if it wasn’t, what if, as Hy-Jinx says, the Masques wear people and it is the people that are seen, and something else is going on unseen - the Masques themselves? Hood turns all of this over in his mind. Does that mean that Masqued Madeleine knows of Pomegranite’s Tower, knows of M’A-bja, at least in some manner, knows of Ambrosia, of Mordette and Grumpini? Hood shakes his head, there are too many questions, too many unknowns, he must simply keep his eyes open and observe.

“Hood?” Hy-Jinx speaks again, clearly having run the course of her own contemplation, her voice continuing in its muted tone. “ Could Ambrosia do magic like you? I guess she could - she initially trained at Arkanthor didn’t she? How about elemental magic?” Hy-Jinx pauses for a moment, before continuing. “I think the mask has all of the abilities of those who wear it. Maybe…but there’s something that’s nagging on my mind. What are these things? I mean there’s no string, no tie, but you put it on your face and it sticks, I mean it becomes you or you it, I don’t know. Where did they come from? And what are they doing? I mean, they seem like they’re on our side but…are they?”

Hood shrugs, staring again at the ceiling, a cocktail of emotions swirling and storming, turning his mood murderously dark. The potential of having to meet Ambrosia’s mother is playing heavily on his mind, along with the feeling of responsibility to avenge Ambrosia. He has spent weeks holed up in the mountains, studying, but within less than a single day back in Kera’Bur he has been ushered once again to death’s door…and all of it avoidable. Hood contemplates his actions, and his mood darkens further - he has been acting like a fool. Every time he believes himself to have achieved something, to have taken a step further along the road to power, he is brought low, only to be shown how powerless he truly is. Not only that, he is drifting aimlessly. What was the point in returning to Kera’bur? He had convinced himself that it was to take responsibility: firstly, to help Hy-Jinx, check on the whereabouts of Helmet, to return the mask to its owners: the Guild. To do the right thing. Hellbent as he maybe on confronting Grumpini and Mordette, to do so, his mind must be clear, and clear it cannot be if he has not taken care of his responsibilities…but what now of his responsibility to Ambrosia’s mother? And then the heads in the glass factory - something darkly arcane and sinister is afoot. A shift in power has occurred, at least in Kera’bur…and then the vampir,,,Hood has still not forgotten that encounter…there are too many threads being woven…Or is this simply an excuse, an excuse not to confront the reality that he does not possess the skills, intuition and wherewithal to even remotely contend with Grumpini’s machinations. An excuse to turn him from the fact that he has been outmanoeuvred at every turn…failed at every challenge that fortune has thrown his way…Hood closes his eyes, his mind is whirring, his head beginning to ache, and with this ache, his ears seems to ring or more accurately whisper…Hood tries to centre himself, breathes deeply. In, out. Stay the course, Hood says to himself, stay the course…he remembers his achievements with the window of Aspartmenane, he remembers the insights that he has glimpsed and gathered, insights into the use of magic that none have spoken of, that he has fought for and gained all on his own…Stay the course, the many shall become one…but saying this reminds him of the plaza, reminds him what he was doing last, before he awoke. Suddenly aware that he does not know where his backpack is, or where the Sphere of Pomegranate has gotten to, Hood sits bolt upright, panic stricken, the covers falling away from him, revealing a twisted fabric gauze wrapped about his body, through which dark patches seep.

Hood’s sudden movement causes Hy-Jinx to sit up and observe not only swirls of panic and darker motifs of anger and guilt emanate from him, but also to dimly perceive the bandaging about Hood’s body - Hood’s hooded robe having been removed from him earlier by Masqued Maeve, when she brought him up and put him to bed, with Hy-Jinx busy in her room.

For Hy-Jinx, having limited vision in the first place, with the concern generated by the shocking sight, what little rosiness there is all but disappears.“What has happened to you?!” she asks, dumbfounded and incredulous, as her world turns dark once more, her fingers instinctively tightening about Potweazil for comfort.

In the darkness a single embittered word, rasping and sibilant claws the air: “Fate!”