Box of Blades

The wheel slows… slows… click.

Madame Mirage claps her hands together with a grin wide enough to cut glass.

“Oho! The Box of Blades! A classic! You’re going to love this one, darling—promise!”

Velvet Vixen, still strapped to the wheel, frowns beneath her mask.

“I don’t like the sound of that.”

“Nonsense. It’s not the sound you should be worried about…” Mirage purrs.

With a sharp snap of her wand and a burst of curling pink-and-black smoke, the roulette wheel vanishes.

Velvet Vixen finds herself suddenly standing upright in darkness—her arms free but her body confined within a narrow wooden box, just barely wide enough to shift her weight. Her heels click anxiously against the wooden floor as she instinctively tries to push open the sealed door.

“Hey! Mirage? Not loving the cramped quarters!”

Outside the box, Mirage reappears in a spotlight, now dressed in a stage magician’s tuxedo jacket and fishnets, casually conjuring a rack of long, gleaming swords with a twirl of her wand.

“Oh, don’t be so tense! We’re just bending reality, dear—not you.”

She selects a sword, eyes it dramatically, and thrusts it into the side of the box.

Velvet Vixen braces—

But instead of steel piercing wood, she sees… a slender arm reach through a glowing rift in the side wall. The hand gently brushes her hip as it slides past her, trailing the edge of her corset.

“Okay what the heck—” she gasps, pressing herself back against the opposite wall.

Suddenly, another sword pierces the back panel near her ribs—this time producing a second arm that slips in behind her and wraps around her waist like a magically conjured seatbelt.

Velvet Vixen squirms, caught in the illusion as more swords are thrust into the box, each one spawning more arms—some gently nudging her shoulder or brushing back her hair, others tightening softly at her sides or nudging her chin playfully.

“This is not in the handbook for stage magic!” she yelps.

Outside, Mirage casually tosses a sword from hand to hand.

“Darling, I told you it came with a twist… And now you’re at the center of the act.”