He was standing there frozen in shock, awe, and utter amazement!
Is how Dahlia imagined the imobile plant. Seriously, despite being inanimate, they sure do get expressive sometimes. Smiling to herself, Dahlia decided to move on.
"Ok, if I'm being honest, I get that just hearing a passing description of something complicated isn't guaranteed to really get you pumped up. Add on that I'm not currently allowed to use any magic and it means I can't even give a proper demonstration to wow you."
At this point, she really was grumpy. No, not from the unresponsive plant but rather from her parents. She had a cool aspect that she could finally use, but due to being monitored and not wanting to be restrained or punished, she had been holding off practising magic this whole time. After the days had passed, Dahlia had started to feel like a restrained puppy with a meaty bone just before her nose.
Sighing, she flipped through the pages of her gigantic book, looking at intricate diagrams and tightly packed notes as if it were some bittersweet photo album.
"I guess without being able to show off proper, I'll just summarise for now and then we'll just have to go on with our day… So my unique foundation has a pretty boring name. Body embedded geometric witchcraft. While I'll care more about the name of the final schema, until I figure out my specifier I just want a descriptive name."
Turning through a few more pages, she stopped at a point where a massive map sized document was folded up. Unfolding it, incredibly complicated drawings could be seen. Lines, going here to there, circles intersecting or concentric of each other. Little nodes, some small and round, others looking like large diamonds.
Honestly, it looked like unnecessarily complicated constellations. Like a geometric mathematician and an astrological extremist met at a bar and decided to make a beautiful monstrosity while plastered.
Dahlia whistled, admiring her work.
"Right, so what we have here is… a lot."
She gestured at the sheet, pointing out the different lines, points, circles, and more. She also pointed out how the sheet was actually divided into multiple sections. Each section had the same points and dots, but the lines and shapes were different in each.
"Think of this as my version of connect the dots. The 'nodes' as I call them are reference points, and I can use them to quickly construct geometric patterns I've made previously. The different versions here are the main geometric patterns that I've come up with that each have enough overlap so that they can share the same nodes. If we're using the connect the dots idea, think of it like for every new pattern I make, I need to be able to draw a different image using the same set of dots."
Frowning, she looked over her work. It ticked her off how difficult she found this. She didn't tell Mister Lily, but the majority of the massive unfolded page was filled with half finished products. Patterns she believed should be able to work, but never managed to complete them.
She had incredible pride for what she had completed, and even had a huge deal of fun while working on the half finished designs, but still…
"Tch. Anyway, basically what you need to know is that I'll be able to reshape the lines on the fly and can use the nodes to speed up the process if it's something I have memorised. Despite being able to switch, it's not instantaneous though. Manipulating magic tattoos takes effort and practice."
Looking one last time at the half finished products, Dahlia began to dejectedly fold it all back up.
"There are a couple final parts that I can't really talk about yet because they were waiting on my aspect and specifier. Chances are, I'll be overlaying tattooed imagery onto the geometric patterns as a connector for those. Kind of think of me using them for their main purpose, and doubling it up by also using them as mini ley lines all over my body. They'll serve two purposes that way."
"I guess, in real layman terms, the schema will kinda be like having different modes. Every time I rearrange the geometric patterns, it will redefine the tattoos and reshape how my magic works. Assuming I can actually pull this off in practice."
She closed the book, looking a little bitter as her desperation to practice almost boiled over.
'Soon Dahlia. Soon.'
Looking up, she let out one more long sigh before beginning to move Mister Lily back to its reserved spot in the greenhouse. She gave it some fertiliser for its troubles and then gently stoked a leaf a couple times.
"Thankyou for listening to me. I know I can be long winded, rambly, and tough to understand at times, but I just needed to talk about this. I'm excited and I'm going a little stir crazy.You did really well, so I'll try not to be quite as bad from now on, ok?"
She smiled at her precious plant. Don't tell it, but it's secretly one of her favourites.
"Ok, now I need to go get back to my regular dull life. Hopefully I can not go insane from my lockdown. There's just a little over a week until the debutante now, so hopefully I can last that long."
Picking up her two stupidly heavy books, she let out a low groan as she slowly made her way out the garden and back to her lonely room.
Returning, nothing special happened. And that continued to be the case. For a while.
It was so boring!
Days had been flying by, and Dahlia had gotten into the habit of sleeping to pass time. It was like a time machine that just needed some exertion to recharge. She had an aversion to working out so… throughout the week, the moment she woke up, Dahlia would grab a brain numbing book and read it until she forced herself to sleep again.
What subject could possibly bore this academic obsessed girl you ask? The answer is journals and noble autobiographies. It's like they were written with the intention of eating brain cells.
After having been a recluse and mentally tortured herself for days now, her pseudo time machine finally did its job. Early in the morning, Dahlia was still asleep and under the covers when a big ruckus could be heard outside the door.
Little chirps and whispers could be heard coming from a collection of maids. They genuinely seemed excited, despite never wanting to have anything to do with her. Dahlia had to groggily raise an eyebrow at the unusually excited maids.
'I know today's the day, but why the hell are they so pumped up? You know you're going to have to interact with me, right?'
Suddenly a voice rang out, shutting up all the maids at once. The authority that came with it seemed to freeze everyone in place and a total silence followed. Still cosy under the covers, Dahlia nodded sagely. Yes, if there's one thing her mother was good at, it was being authoritative.
Hiding under the sheets, she waited for the door to finally open and when it did, chaos was unleashed. No one cared for her sleep or rest. No one seemed to think of her as a person at all. Today, she was a doll. Specifically, their doll to dress up and make as pretty as possible. She would not have a say.
The maids were all commoner girls and rarely got to play with jewellery, makeup, and expensive clothes, so considering the debutant was their first chance to dress Dahlia up, they took to it with a terrifying fervour.
For her part, Dahlia sighed and let them do what they wanted. She never had a good gauge on what was attractive anyway, so she didn't care that much. As her body began to be tossed around between the maids, her mother stifled a laugh.
'Weird. She's in a way better mood since I last saw her.'
"Alright, you all can keep having your fun so long as the finished product is good. Just shut your mouths as you do your work; I need to hear my own thoughts."
The Baroness had snapped at them, but there was something playful in her voice at the same time.
'Yeah, ok, really weird. Normally she'd be whipping them and me already. If I'm totally honest, seeing her like this kinda scares me more. I have no idea what to predict.'
Her thoughts came to a halt as Sabrina turned to look at her.
"So girl, I hope you know how today is going to go? You're to be good. You're not to act out or draw unnecessary attention to yourself. You have two purposes. The first is to act the part of a Lionysus while the second is to seduce Lord Alcaster. Failure in either won't be tolerated, understood?"
She looked at Dahlia who had currently been stripped and smirked. The girl was shivering right now, and based on her expression, at least half of it was from anxiety. The power trip she felt with her was too damn good.
The Baroness chuckled to herself as she saw signs of her old handiwork. Scars littered Dahlia's body in any region that wouldn't be easily seen. Her daughter looked like her and if she was speaking honestly, she was gorgeous.
Almost silver platinum hair with a slight wave in it, a fair complexion, a generously curvy body and shockingly brilliant hazel eyes, which ranged from green to grey depending on the light. Sabrina always secretly admired what she had created so long ago, thinking it was a work of art.
Looking at the scars that marred her, one might expect her to think the girl's beauty was ruined. That she was disfigured. But the Baroness looked at those scars as if they were the cherry on top. Just as she gave birth to Dahlia in all her beauty, she also created those scars.
It should be noted that although she found her beautiful, that never raised her opinion that much. Sabrina had always seen her daughter as something close to an insect. A pretty insect, but an insect nonetheless. She was something to toy with and distract her through endlessly boring days.
A lot of her actions were regulated by her husband. Back when Dahlia had more of his favour, Sabrina held back quite. But in recent years, she treated Dahlia as a verbal and physical punching bag and it always felt so satisfying. What kind of punching bag squeals and cries after all?
Frankly, her daughter was far better and more precious than nearly any other form of entertainment, and if it weren't for some recent developments finally getting her attention, Sabrina suspected she might have tried to keep Dahlia chained up. Knowing the girl was finally going into the real world to be sold off to a nobleman who would likely abuse Dahlia in place of herself… The mere thought of it made her blood boil.
It was to the extent that she almost even spoke against her husband but no, she couldn't do that. Not now. Not yet. So it was with a heavy heart that she had to let her daughter go. With so much talent and being so fun to abuse, she imagined there was a good chance she may one day try to retrieve her, but for now the little bird was leaving the nest.
Dahlia of course had no idea of any of this. Chances are, if she had even an inkling of how her mother thought, she'd bolt out the door and not look back. Instead, she was just typical levels of frightened, not knowing how close she was to obtaining a terrifying future.
While the Baroness was lost in her own thoughts, Dahlia had already nodded and passively agreed to her requests. Snapping back to reality, she gave Dahlia another once over, this time being more critical.
"There are going to be a large number of bigshots at this debutante. Normally that wouldn't be the case and it'd just be family and close friends of those who are having their debut, but somehow, the local count rangled a bunch of people to come. I don't entirely know why or what his purpose may be, but regardless of intention, it means there are a lot of people to impress."
She gave a meaningful look at Dahlia before continuing.
"You get it? Your actions can affect everyone and everything in our family. Eyes will be on you even more than they might be otherwise because it's your debut. Thankfully, they don't know your aspect or any other information, so they shouldn't try to pry too much. If they do, you're smart. Figure out a good lie to get them off your case."
Dahlia was standing there, mostly just passively listening as she was getting dolled up, but when she saw where her mother's eyes looked, her whole body flinched as if she suffered an electric shock.
Sabrina had shifted her gaze over to her desk drawer, where all her notes discussing escape were. The Baroness smirked as she leaned in close and whispered tauntingly in her ear.
"You think I don't know? We never told you how our own magic works, so maybe you didn't know. I'm *always* watching you. I saw your notes. I saw your plans. I saw your hope. And you know what? Try. Manage to please us and meet all the other requirements I gave you, then I don't really care. Do a good job and try to escape like you planned."
She stifled a laugh at her expression. Dahlia on the other hand had her blood drain from her face and felt faint at the revelation. Not only that, but confusion swept over her and her face showed it clearly.
"W-what? What are you talking about? Wait. Why? What's in this for you? You know about everything and yet you're still letting me do it… does dad know about this?"
Her mother let out a genuine mercurial laugh when she saw the confusion so blatant on the girl's face.
'So geniuses can be stupid too sometimes huh?'
"To answer the last question first, no, he does not. He did set up magical sensors to watch you, but you detected and avoided those flawlessly. I only know because my abilities are very well suited to things like gathering information. I also have no desire to tell him. I don't particularly love his plans and in some cases, if your plans succeed, it actually benefits me more so long as I play my own cards right."
She smirked at Dahlia who still didn't fully grasp this bizarre situation.
"So those are the justifications, but you asked 'why.' Fufufu, girl, the reason why is that I'm always bored and more than anything else, I want to see you squirm as you struggle and try to survive."
Dahlia's eyes went huge at that. Clearly, something had happened recently that had made the Baroness more animated and less grumpy. She was well aware that her mother found joy in abusing her, but she always figured it was a 'standard level' of abuse enjoyment.
Looking at her mother now, those eyes were wild and filled with chaotic and cruel intent that made only one thing come to her mind.
'Oh shit. She's insane.'