🔥 Gaining power, for a price

She's failed.

She witnesses the Order mages as they dispose of the limp body, covered in mushrooms and dust.

This is the corpse of Enora. A young wild mage. A promising student, if given the chance. She didn't have any. Her father failed her, the Order failed her, Alektô failed her. Too little, too late, and Alektô is left with a corpse, remorse and regrets.

Yet another beautiful spark extinguished before it ever really rised. How many has she lost already ? How many more will she have to witness dying at the hands of anti-mages, of corruption or of their own personal nemesis - strangers, hunters, or their own kin ? How many more will the Order Itself push past a student limits to examine their magic and corruption, at their own life risk ?

Alektô should have never reported her observations and notes about Enora to higher ups. She did it with an honest intent to understand Enora's mushroom and decaying magic, with her trust, to help her embrace and control it. Not the Order, not the Crown, her. So she could chose the path she wanted. Alektô betrayed her.

And here was the result. Enora's face was distorted in pain, anguish forever carved in her traits as she had exhaled her last breath. 

Alektô finds herself alone in her office in Namarast, past and current files of her many students cluttered on her desk. Her hand shakes as she reaches for her glass full of an old, refined whiskey. They did not see it coming. No, she did not see it coming.

Her glass crashes against the wall to explode in a myriad of sharp shards. 

"What's the fucking point ?" she shouts in ire. She smashes the almost empty bottle on her locked door. "Why find them if I can't protect them, eh ?"

She hurls her large desk in spite of her small frame in a pit of rage, the echo of a loud growl invading the space, fuming. This is not enough. She is not enough. But she will be.

Alektô grabs in a hast every file she carefully completed over time, now discarded in a mess on the floor. She remembers each one by heart. She will burn them one by one, and replace them with false reports. This place is not a support it's a purge. She throw them in her purse and slams the door behind her.

"Alektô, what was -"

"Eat shite Eddie. Take my classes this afternoon I can't be there," she orders with a pissed posh accent. "I'll be back tomorrow."

She hits the pavement with her furious high heels. She will keep watch on her current students. But she will not bring any more in that prison. She will lie through her teeth for them all. There won't be another corpse to find - because she will ask for a favor and pay the price to protect them.

She will turn to Fortune. When justice has failed, it's time for betrayal and revenge.