⚔️Serberia

-- Thank you... - Alessia paid the guard and quickly left.

The suspicious glances she couldn't see burned into her. She tried not to look around; the memories of yesterday were too vivid, and the beauty of Myrkoria was a painful reminder of the price of her mistake. Even the stones she walked on seemed to know about her ugliness and shame. She walked away, towards the outskirts, with no specific destination, trying to figure out how to live, or at least survive. No matter how hard she tried to hide her disfigurement, staying here for any significant amount of time would be impossible. She couldn't return to Baldur alone, she didn't know any other places, and there were no places where she would be welcomed. Alessia suddenly felt like a mistake, a newborn creature simply thrown into this world, and no one, except the greedy guard, even suspected of her existence. A terrible feeling of loneliness combined with a sense of helplessness. The only hope was the Baldur squad, which was supposed to take over the patrol. At best, without fire support, they would accept the suspicious, hunchbacked sorcerer in a mask into their ranks. At worst, they would tie her up and throw her onto the countess's carpet, but she would find a way out of that too. Alessia hurried towards the outskirts of the eastern forest.

This wasn't how she had imagined her morning walk. After this agonizing journey outside the city, Alessia finally had a chance to examine the mask in detail. It wasn't the best piece of craftsmanship: the shape was far from perfect, the decoration was simple, and it was even made not of bronze, but of brass – the cheap gold of the poor. She could have done much better, but whatever the mask was, it was now her face, perhaps for the rest of her life. She could make a new mask, but no one would ever see her real face again. The monster that Alessia saw in the mirror when she woke up wasn't her face. And what kind of life would it be, always hidden behind a mask? Was it any different from living without a face at all? She would have to learn. Learn to live without a face, learn to manage without familiar connections, learn this new life, but Alessia, even though she had already learned one lesson this morning, wasn't quite ready to fully accept her new self. To accept that the ugly hunchback of today was the same as the beautiful girl of yesterday.

Memories of her life before flooded her eyes with tears. The memories of that ill-fated night would haunt her forever, but now, reliving it all, she discovered a new feeling within herself, a feeling she hadn't noticed before: pride. The image of the disgruntled Gonzo, with his angry face like a spoiled child, wearing pathetic thongs, who came to seduce her but had to endure her whims, then was humiliated and infuriated by a few phrases, and finally left with nothing, was the last memory from her past life. Perhaps the happiest of them all. She, a mortal, weak woman, a craftswoman from the depths of Serberia, dared to behave this way with a powerful demon. Was it foolishness or courage? Perhaps something in between, and the name for it was pride and arrogance. She could have easily made a deal – what was Gonzo worse than any other man, after all? But to not spoil the comedy, to not argue, to not shove the demon's nose into his idiotic, arrogant speeches, when such evil had taken on this, for some unknown reason, lustful baboon in thongs – Alessia definitely couldn't do that.
She smiled involuntarily, but the motionless mask hid this smile.

Alessia sat on the edge of the forest all day, but the squad didn't come. She went to sleep in the southern forest, and every day of the week repeated itself exactly, until the patrol finally arrived.