Bruno Bangnyfe

A sharp-featured young wizard, Bruno keeps his black hair spiked on top and shaved close at the sides, a lone fringe hanging over his brow and two blue streaks rising at the front. His eyebrows are thin and angular, sweeping up toward his temples above pale eyes and a strong jaw. He favors a fur-collared blue jacket worn over a dark shirt bearing an animal skull, black fingerless gloves ringed with backward-facing metal spikes at each digit, white coveralls knotted at the waist, and black sneakers each marked with an X on the tongue. A blue mask hangs at his left elbow, shaped like the lower jaw of a skull and fitted with a breathing filter on each cheek, so that when he dons it the jaw moves in time with his own speech.

Bruno runs hot, a fierce and quick-tempered wizard fiercely loyal to the order Wing Bind maintains. He is aghast that a Dark Dragon has breached Reverse London for the first time in a century and rounds on his fellow Directors for their indifference, snapping at one for chewing gum and another for skipping the meeting altogether. What truly drives him is renown: he bristles when Noel Niihashi fails to recognize him, chases the job of executing Balgo Parks because it will etch his name into the city's memory, and cheerfully postpones that execution the instant a Märchen appears, since slaying one promises glory beyond any other prize.

In a fight he turns caustic and cold, fretting more over the paperwork than the life of an opponent he may have just killed, and nothing enrages him faster than an insult aimed at his hair, which he prizes above nearly everything. Beneath the vanity sits a shrewd manipulator who orchestrated an entire terrorist plot to frame Balgo, yet he is not wholly without heart: he shares a genuine bond with his mount Rickenbacker, will bury a grudge to bring down a serious threat, and coolly files the paperwork to lift Balgo's death sentence once it serves the larger aim of luring the remaining Märchen into the open.

When Balgo's status as a Dragonclad draws a Dark Dragon into a rampage through Reverse London, Bruno is summoned before the Top of Horns and lambastes the other Directors for their apathy, and Wolfgang Slashhaut concludes that Balgo must die. Bruno recruits Macy Baljure together with the Dragon she keeps, Cinderella, and stages an attack on The Realist's newspaper offices to pin the blame on Balgo. Once Noel Niihashi and Ninny Spangcole turn up and expose Macy's illegal Dragon, Bruno blasts Ninny off the rooftop and openly admits the frame-up, only to fly into a rage when Noel mocks his hair.

The pair rescue Balgo and turn his own weapon against him, and after summoning Rickenbacker he tracks them to a radio tower and reveals that Balgo has been branded a Punitive Dragon, marking him for death across the city. Cinderella then turns on Bruno, slipping away with the rare Stealth Scale and wounding his mount; recognizing her as a Märchen slated for permanent elimination, he shelves Balgo's execution to hunt her instead, accepting Noel and Ninny's help against her. As head of the magic division he unleashes potent spells such as Hunger Shadow and Greedy Curtain without a word of incantation, endures a direct hit from two Witch Kits at once, and rides the teleporting Rickenbacker into the fray. Cinderella shatters his Greedy Curtain and injures the trio before she is ultimately slain by Billy Banx Jr., after which Bruno files a request with Wolfgang to strip Balgo of his Punitive Dragon status so Wing Bind can use him to draw out the surviving Märchen.