"Perfect soldiers make boring corpses. It's the messy ones who survive."
***
Professor Isolde De Clare had arranged herself in her chair with the kind of deliberate carelessness that took years to perfect.
Her body draped across the worn leather like she owned the entire academy and simply couldn't be bothered to sit up straight. One leg hung over the armrest. Her boot tapped against nothing in particular. Her amber eyes swept across the constellation of scrying orbs that filled the faculty monitoring room from floor to ceiling.
Each translucent sphere revealed a different student team's journey through the underground labyrinth. The surfaces pulsed with that ethereal blue glow of active divination magic. Cast strange shadows across her face as she watched.
Dozens of them. Arranged in neat rows. Each one a window into someone else's struggle for survival.
