<div class="floatright">(https://i.imgur.com/xWvVE62.jpg)</div><div align="center"><strong><span class="bbc_size" style="font-size: 14pt;">Hectavia Koth (https://www.myth-weavers.com/sheet.html#id=1743167)</span></strong><br/>________________________</div><br/><em>Cursed. Broken. Taken. <br/><br/>But strong.</em><br/><br/>The thoughts came, unbidden, to Hectavia. They came with the bright light of the sky above, replacing the gloomy darkness of her cell. A breath rose from her chest and she began to sense her body once again. It ached with a dull and distant pain. More tangible, her back felt the rough-hewn stone beneath it and her skin tingled with a slight chill.<br/><br/><em>Enough of this. Get up. Don't flounder like a fish out of water.</em><br/><br/>The reprimand to herself did the trick. With a noise that is almost a snarl, the woman sat upright on the stone slab, forcing her eyes to open and stay open. And when they do, her gaze inevitably descended across herself. What she found was her pale skin, given the permanent purpled tinge of asphyxiation, marked along the outsides of her thighs and up her ribs with dark, jagged infernal markings – not quite scars, not quite tattoos.<br/><br/>She couldn't see her face, but she felt at it, knowing what was there. In the dim puddles of her cell, she had seen her own reflection. Had she a mirror, red eyes would have stared back at her, heavily-lidded, sultry but dangerous. High cheekbones and lips cocked in a perpetual smirk are the legacy of her humanity, while the curling horns above her head testify most prominently to her new state of being. A cursed state, and a doomed one.<br/><br/>The tiefling shook her head again, clearing it. She spoke aloud, her voice snapping like a whip, venomous:"I've suffered. But no longer. I have power to claim, and to wield. I'll have what is mine."<br/><br/>Swiftly appraising her situation, Hectavia began to walk. All roads led down the old road with its post, whereon flapped an old sheaf of parchment. Past that, she saw signs of habitation: a cabin and something that could be called a village... if one were feeling very, very generous. She wasn't, incidentally.<br/><br/><span class="bbc_u">                                 </span><br/><br/>The paper was inscribed with blood. She read it, her body perfectly still and statuesque, letting the hopelessness of the missive run off her like water. "Weak," she declares. "They were weak and I am strong. I shan't fail as they did." The tiefling's hand curled around the parchment, crushing it in her grasp. She tossed it aside to blow away in the breeze, a final humiliation to Alvera's weakness.<br/><br/>Hectavia turned her back on the sign. The road is no place to stay, she knew, but neither did she relish going further without power or protection.<em>My magic. I must have that which was promised to me.</em>She made her way back up the cliff, to the stone slab on which she had appeared. A place of power, of magic. A place to get that which was promised to her, perhaps.<br/><br/>The warlock reached the slab of rough stone and raised her hands above it. "Hear me, Princes of the Hells," she calls, her voice imperious and sharp, "We have struck a bargain. Fulfill it now: give to me my magic. Give to me my grimoire and my focus. This I<em>demand.</em>"