His words constantly echoed in her memory.

“Do you know why you have such a hard time, Matriarch? They all already know what we both do. You’re just a few bad days from becoming me.”

The beast just had to gloat before she managed to teleport herself to her home realm in escape, but not before the beast inadvertently infused her body with chaotic energy, leaving her body dark-scarred.

The Matriarch stared at the mirror in her apartment, recalling his final words. Her gorgeous eyes had been replaced with a full glowing orange, the remnants of chaos that mutated her pupils into something alien to mortals. The veins that travel through her face are forever prominent, like when someone survives lightning strike. This however, is across her entire form.

She forced herself into a smile, making a note of her monstrous mutated teeth. Her gums were slightly offset to encompass more space, as her teeth were pointed and sharp which were slightly smaller and rigid than a normal mortal’s. Her smile faded with a sigh of discontent, and prodded deeply in her cheek to cast a glamour spell. The only thing she truly ‘fixed’ with such magic was her teeth, she allowed everything else to remain. None of this made her ‘ugly’ by any stretch of the imagination, but all of it together could easily be construed as disconcerting by the unprepared. Once her teeth normalized through such illusions, she smiled at the mirror again. This time more genuine and warm, not terribly minding her dark-scarred visage, but largely considered it a mark of experience. Everyone has a story, after all.

All a result of a catastrophic run-in with a warlord, a beast of a man that haunts her as her grandest failure. She shook the memory off, considering it best to be revisited at a later occasion.

Thankfully, even the potential spookiness in her appearance, she had a few tools at her disposal to offset the problem. Normally her warm smile and silky smooth voice was typically enough. Over time, she had settled on an odd mixture of an accent, a type of Italian mixed with a naturally occurring Dutch, the second of which she attributes to being some kind of cousin to the norse gods.

Her mask does as it implies, and masks both of those to a degree. She was rather proud of its make, she spent many decades in Italy and absorbed some of their culture. She made masks a large part of her organization's culture, though their designs were usually free to be an extension of the wielder. Hers started out pristine as her visage once was, but she painted in the crags and cracks once she lost that major battle. Again, she didn’t hate that she lost. She was just irritated at the circumstances, and those words echo in her mind along with a growing frustration at the absolute truth of it. Gods, she thought. Why did he have to say it with such hate.

In more recent history, in trying to keep her mind off the past. She put on her mask and armored attire and moved back into the halls of Snowcrag. Necromancy as well as her sub-study of blood magic were illegal, as they are in most timelines. There is a wide window of abuse that both types of magic can encourage, but Matriarch has spent a lot of time attempting to disprove such a notion. However a certain degree of realism needed to be held, as well as a variable degree of measured expectations. Necromancy and its other dark neighbors far too often draw in a specific kind of crowd. Through time and great effort, she absorbed herself into a magister study known as “Gnosis Genealogia”, eventually becoming their leader through some unfortunate circumstances. However she acquired it, she made a great deal of effort into guiding the organization (typically labeled a ‘cult’ by most sources) into respectability. This has mixed success, as she also spent a great deal of time hopping from timeline to timeline as the need required. The multiverse is very needy.

Matriarch giggled at the thought, but quietly and to herself as to not look like an utterly crazy person. Not that she’d have to do much for that anyway. She certainly stood out, far more than she has before. However there was a slight cultural buffer that allowed her to not quite be the subject of stares. She was used to the occasional double-take. The styles of Snowcrag Academy were more archaic, borrowing wizardly concepts from the world’s media while still being made with modern techniques. The jackets were gaudy and the collars were borderline silly, but the pants were just a vaguely fancier version of cargo jeans. She counted her blessings, thanking the merciful Allfather that she was exempt from having to wear such nonsense. Some students made it work but tightening the sleeves with bracelets, but most of the time it was only worn for major gatherings. After lectures were over, students were free to do as they wished… and most wished to just remove the jacket and tie it on their waist like a belt. It became quite a thing, seeing a legion of adults wandering around with massive collared jackets dangling from their hips.

Amusement passing her as briefly as it came, today was the start of a new semester. What that brought was a new gaggle of initiates. As a trusted outsider, she was given her own apartment and office which allowed her a certain amount of freedom. This freedom did not extend to Gnosis itself, which made recruiting from said gaggles a complication. Still, her presence allowed the Academy to acquire a certain degree of legitimacy in the darker arts and more underground elements. The Matriarch to some was considered a bit of a mediator between the less than legal organizations that use dark magics as their major focus. She was comfortable with this. Some freedom was had, but she was still not high up enough with the Magisters to be considered at fault if things were to go wrong. A well played maneuver by Matriarch, which had the small blowback of being distrusted by certain council members. She found it manageable.

Her illegal cult status notwithstanding, it did not stop her from surveying the crowds and helping filter through hopefuls that wish to delve deeper into the darker secrets that the aesther might provide. She looked for a specific type of person, stable and curious. She would know nothing at a glance, of course, and spends a good majority of her time in her office and acts as a counselor of sorts for students asking about said magics. She answered many questions about the legality and risks, as well as many other curiosities.

She made herself fashionably late to the headmaster’s addressing of the group of new enrollees. Somewhat strategic with again, mixed success as her garb still acquired a few passive but brief stares. She was a very perceptive woman, noting at the occasional duo or trio of young mortals whispering to each other while side-eyeing her direction. Alas, she did not possess the ability of supernatural hearing, and did not bother casting a spell to compensate. One for ethical reasons, but the second more practical; She damn well knew the kinds of things they were saying.

It was a speech she had already heard dozens times. A newer facility it was, but old enough to where dozens of semesters have come and gone. She tuned it out, and her attention was surveying the crowd like a security camera.

One woman caught her eyes. A woman of gorgeous dark skin, all the more visible by the contrast of glowing tattoos that she recognized to be of a newer, modern-born magic. Infusion was a new but versatile art, a great way to cause magicless beings to become a blank slate of aetherial use. It was clever, and was vaguely offended that she hadn’t thought of or heard of it before it was invented. Mortals always continued to surprise her.

This woman lost Matriarch’s attention briefly as the subject of her scanning gaze found her way to one of the professors. However, their familiar side-eyed gaze upon her caught her own once more. Again, she was used to this. Going by the law of averages, they were no doubt inquiring as to The Matriarch’s role in Snowcrag. She’s often asked directly if she is a professor, and is always sad to answer in the negative. She gave lectures and classes in her own way, typically her one on one’s in the office, and that’s all she typically told them at first.

The Matriarch found herself in an embarrassing moment of weakness; She was staring! How pedestrian, but she was unlike anything she had seen in recent days. The dark skinned beauty wandered towards the lunch tables and continued side-eyeing her.

“Goodness,” Matriarch thought. “I wonder if she’ll speak to me, but I am such an alien and foreign entity to these people.” She is oh, so pretty…

Her mind then wandered to figure out how many hells there actually were.