Blue cigar smoke that started at waist height and went up to dance across the ceiling cast the parlor in a haze. Well-dressed men and elegant ladies stood in small groups, talking about the latest court gossip or news from the continent. The men smoked cigars or held sherry glasses, sipping expensive port. Women bedecked in shimmering jewelry, their hair done up in elaborate fashions that took hours to prepare and would take only seconds to undo, laughed over fluted champagne glasses. A portly man sat in a red-leather chair, his round potbelly straining his cummerbund. He twiddled a cigar in his fat fingers, ash falling to the floor. Wisps of hair began to peel off the top of his bald head. Reaching up a hand, he tried to smooth them back down, plastering the lose strands down with oily fingers. The guests moved around him, talking and drinking and smoking, yet he sat apart from it all, lost in his own world of thought and fantasy. Raising his cigar, he took a long pull of it, the tip flaring bright. Sweat dripped down his shiny forehead, and he looked like a fat dragon as smoke curled out from his nose and mouth, curiosity twisting his features.

With a great heave, he pushed his heavy body from the squishy chair, the leather creaking loudly. His short body weaved through the gatherings of people like they were wraiths, no more substance to them than the smoke wafting through the air. Parting a pair of heavy, velvet drapes, he passed into a wide hallway. Old tapestries of hunts and battles long since forgotten adorn the walls. Heavy busts of dead family members sit on elaborate pedestals, their marble faces staring sightlessly upon the portly man. A few weak gas lamps provide the only light, casting the hall in deep shadows and making the stone faces all the more grizzly and inhuman. He walked up to a tall slender figure, adorned in heavy dark robes and cloaks, scarves wrapped around their face and head. A tall top hat sits atop the folds of cloth. Long, slender arms in black coat sleeves are crossed over a slim chest, hands covered in white gloves. The figure stared down at the ground, lost in thought and time. The portly man harrumphed, clearing his throat and catching the stranger’s eyes. They were the only part of the stranger not covered, two windows to the soul laid bare to the world, while the rest hide under cloth. The portly man stared up into those inhuman eyes, each an impossible shade of red that seemed to illuminate the darkness more so than the flickering lamps.

“They say you are a magician, a shifter of faces and form,” the rotund man asked with no preamble, flicking his cigar ash on the carpet.

The stranger unfolded their arms, dropping them to disappear into the folds of fabric. “I am many things, and wear many faces,” the stranger said in a voice that was remarkable only for the fact of how unremarkable it was. The perfect gray voice, void of any hint of sex or age, class or education, hate or love, it spilled from the stranger’s mouth like dead leaves. “I wear many bodies, and many hats.”

The fat man tugged at his drooping mustache, unsettled by the stranger's dead voice. “You can be anyone?”

The stranger chuckled, a queer noise that sent an odd corkscrew sensation down the man’s spine. “I can be the most beautiful man, or the most repulsive woman. I can be the most saintly angel, or the most depraved demon. Anything you wish or desire, your greatest dreams or darkest nightmares, I can become them.”

“What is it you are called by, stranger?” The portly man asked, the hairs standing erect on the back of his neck.

The glimmering red eyes smiled, crinkling at the corners. “My names have been as numerous as my faces. Tonight though, you may call me… Valtini.”