“Knock knock, princess!” is all that precedes the door of Pericene Bregant’s room being kicked off its hinges. She yelps in fright as always as it crashes into the middle of her small room, scattering splinters and dust across the floor. Even though Theid started this particular brand of bullying more than a year ago, breaking down her door every rest to leave her without privacy for days at a time, it gets to her every time. The explosion of splinters and dust won't settle for a good minute, long enough for Theid to get that dust all over his pants and use it as an excuse to twist her ears.

"G-go away, Th-Theid," Pericene says, but there's no conviction in her voice. She can't force anything on her brother while he's more than twice her age, and it wouldn't matter anyway. The Bregant family doesn't celebrate its embarrassments.

"But I've come all the way from the cozy warm west wing to make sure you're up in time for your classes! Surely you can be a bit more grateful for my free service, little sis?" The twenty-two years of Theid's life have not been kind to him, despite his privilege, and he has turned that unkindness on others. In particular, he picks on Pericene, whom even their parents don't seem to care for.

"Say, when's your debut? I'm sure that father is absolutely ecstatic about marrying you off to some baronet's poor bastard son just as soon as you turn fourteen. In fact, I'd even bet he's already got the paperwork lined up!" He cackles like someone just told him a real gut-buster of a joke.

Biting her lip until it stings is the only response Pericene has.

"Aw, don't cry now! The Baroness is already here, I'm sure she'd find it troublesome if her student were a puffy-eyed mess. Again." The smirk her older brother wears is paired perfectly with his hawkish nose. His clothes are fine and preened, while Pericene is still in her dressing gowns. The manner of his tone, his attitude, and even his words are all tailored towards making her feel as worthless as possible, and if not for the fact he had to look up at his nine-year-old sister he might have been an endlessly imposing force in her life.

Instead, he is simply the most annoying of her troubles, all of which stem from Count Bregant himself.

"Th-Theid, I have to ch-change clo-clothes," Pericene pleads, dipping her head a bit. He likes it when she tries to shrink in his presence.

"Who cares what a beast wears to a carnival?" he spits back regardless.

"Embrace of the Gods, not again Lord Theid!"

The shrill cry comes from Clara, the east wing's only maid, who looks angrier than a maid ought to.

"Oh come off it, cleaning messes is your job!" Theid shrills back.

"My job is to take care of Lady Pericene's needs, not to clean up after your behavior, Lord Theid. One would hope the heir of Bregant would have more respect for the home of his forefathers, and the home he'll have to care for himself when the title is passed along!"

"As if. I'm burning this wing to the ground as soon as our oversized little miss useless over there is gone, and nothing some pithy maid says will stop me!"

Theid then puts a finger into each ear and starts shouting nonsense over Clara's replies as the maid does her best to defend her place of employment from its negligent future master.

Pericene moves to the corner of her room, a nook between the window and wardrobe she keeps clear for moments just like these, and curls up behind the curtains to cover her ears and wait for the shouting to stop.

Theid wastes nearly an hour of time being a general nuisance and keeping Pericene from changing into proper clothes, and now that she's finally ready the Baroness has been waiting nearly two hours to begin lessons for the day. 

Pericene takes a deep breath and holds it for a moment as she twines her cloth-wrapped fingers through the interwoven braids of her hair. Splinters found her flesh all too welcoming, and now she tries to focus on the burning sting of their presence.

It doesn’t help, of course. Her hands still shake. Her stomach is still doing flips. Her nerves are frayed beyond repair. There is no escaping this next trial. There is no way out.

She exhales, as slowly as she can. If there is one benefit to her large figure, it is that her lungs seem to have grown proportionally, and she is able to hold quite a bit of air. Letting it out as slowly as possible is her last defiance against the torment lying in wait on the far side of the door before her.

All too soon, she has nothing left. Freeing her fists from her skirts and clenching them tightly enough to worry the bandages wrapping her fingers with healing salves, Pericene knocks on the door.

“You may enter.”

The voice of Baroness Corheart sounds like the sharpening of knives in Pericene’s ears, but still, she enters the room. Better to not risk additional punishment.

The drawing room is spacious, and can easily seat twenty people in comfort. Under her tutor's glare, it feels as open and free as the inside of a wardrobe.

"By the Gods' gleaming lights, I thought you were a maid. You might be a pathetic excuse for a noble, little lady, but at least you are a noble. Enter the room properly next time."

On theme with her voice, her appearance is that of a rakish and bitter gambler, eyes glittering out from sunken sockets. Her wiry frame is draped in a puffy iron-gray dress, and black-gloved hands gently carry an oiled riding crop. A perpetually displeased expression keeps the Baroness's thoughts heavily veiled, although historically she is not in the habit of keeping them to herself when it comes to her students.

"Is there a reason you have decided to make me wait on you this morning, Lady Pericene?"

"No, B-Baroness, I-I was-"

"So you mean to say it was in fact to utterly and completely waste my time. Do sit down already, it hurts my neck to watch you stand there fretting."

Silently, Pericene nods – a move closer to a bow, per lessons verbally scorched into her mind – and takes her seat at the desk. It's far too small for her at this point, having been made when she was six, but no efforts aside from clothes have been made by the Count to adjust to her overgrown figure. The stool is tiny and leaves her feeling more as though she's sitting on a narrow post than a padded seat. Recently, she's taken to alleviating as much of her weight from the top of it as possible, to preserve her rear end. The results have varied between falling down mid-class and having the inability to walk until the middle of the next day, and not exclusively.

“I must say, girl, you are quite the lucky one. Your unfortunate father was so kind as to afford you my care and education. I'm the best in the Kingdom, you know, but should it come out that one of my students was a dud, well… I can't imagine his relief when I offered to take on your corrections for free.”

Pericene hardly has to try to swallow her words. It’s a memory the Baroness references often, the time she was meant to show off her unique air and earth affinities. After all, the elements aren’t compatible, so it would be groundbreaking to see someone break that assumed rule. A way to truly become a valuable part of the family, and uphold the Bregant household name with honor as father wants.

With no time to even learn how to use magic properly, however, Pericene was swiftly scheduled to perform in front of guests. The botched party event was a punishment from her mother for “being too big” at the age of 5. The humiliation was heavily unbearable, and she hadn’t been able to argue when the shame was used to justify keeping her out of the public eye.

“I hope you're going to start applying yourself sometime soon, it would be a terrible shame to waste the new lesson plan I've got with your name all over it. Despite your utterly immobile progress, I have found a way to fix you right up!” The way the lady claps her hands to emphasize fix makes Pericene unusually uncomfortable. Not that her teacher was ever not a source of discomfort, but that makes her unease all the more strange.

"Now, where did we leave off last time?" Baroness Corheart says, tapping her chin with the butt of her riding crop. It's not quite a rhetorical question, or rather, it is a question with no correct answer. Even if Pericene recalls exactly what was said in the final minutes of her previous lesson, she would be corrected with a wave of that crop.

"Dull, girl," the Baroness says with a grumble, before turning to the chalkboard. She's already written several things on it in nigh-illegible handwriting and slaps the business end of the crop next to a list.

"Read it aloud."

"L-light, air, f-fire, water, earth," Pericene replies immediately. The words had already been drummed into her head by the previous month’s lessons.

"Improvement, how rare. What do these represent?"

"Th-the principal el-elements of… of magic."

"Do go on, need I prompt you for every sentence?"

Pericene flinches. Usually, the Baroness pairs harsh words with at least a threat of her crop, but she hasn't even crossed the room this time. It makes the girl's cheeks burn all the same, and she wonders if the bandages are going to hold as she works her fingers back and forth.

"No matter," the Baroness says with a hefty sigh. "You were never going to be more valuable than a wedding ring in the first place. Hopefully the Count will show you some mercy in electing to push that date closer, not further."

Restraining her shudder at the thought, Pericene wishes quietly to herself as the lesson continues. She wishes her father would look at her, she wishes her brother would ignore her, and she wishes she had an escape from all this. The gods, of course, don't listen, but maybe in the future a better version of herself will be able to answer her prayers.

The hallway is quiet as the family mausoleum. Clara smooths a hand over the apron of her uniform and glances both ways once again just to be sure, before slipping a key from her pocket.

If the head maid caught her now, it would be a frightful show, to be certain.

With all of the ease and grace of a well-practiced thief, she slips the manor's skeleton key into the locked door before her and tries not to wince at what seems like a deafening click from the blot sliding out.

The door opens silently and she slips inside the room, locking the door behind her.

It's spacious, too spacious for a single student not learning to dance, but she's well familiar by now with the manner and practice of her Lady's "education." As for the man who lets some stranger abuse his only daughter, well, suffice to say Clara only works here for that girl's wellbeing.

More specifically, she is in the room which hosts Lady Pericene's lessons under the tutorship of Baroness Corheart, in order to usurp the current "method" of teaching.

The chalkboard has not been erased and is instead pushed against the wall. Just as her Lady had said, there's hardly any of the eraser strokes one would expect from a well-used board. It would seem the Baroness spends more of her time berating the young lady than educating her. No surprise there.

Clara collects herself, resisting the waves of furious retribution threatening to tie her hands around the old bat's neck until the Baroness is past tense. As a low-born maid, she wouldn't survive the aftermath of so little as spitting on a noble, but that doesn't deter her from fantasizing about it.

She'd even offered to take that fall, for Lady Pericene. Poison in the tea, a dagger in the heart, a venomous snake in the parasol, any sort of retribution for the years of abuse, but the young girl's pleas to stay such measures were so tear-streaked and intense that Clara could only agree to keep her head down.

A thin shadow leans into the corner of the wall which separates the room from the hallway, where a faux pillar provides texture and supports a squared arch which divides the room. Reaching out, Clara finds a smooth leather handle in her grip, and as she draws it out into the light she quietly gasps.

The riding crop feels far too light for the weight of all the crimes heaped upon its history. Still, it is in her hands and a dozen wicked ideas sprint through her head as she takes in the finely stitched work of its leather.

A rattling at the door startles Clara from her reverie, and she swiftly crosses the room to hide where the door itself will hide her when it swings open.

Head maid Lena's towering height and perfectly prim uniform seem to extend the door by its width again, as she holds the door for the Baroness herself. Clara keeps her breathing light, not daring to risk so much as a rustle of her skirts.

"It's not here," the Baroness says curtly, her disgruntled expression almost perfectly visible through her intonation.

"I shall search the manor for it," Lena offers immediately. "Perhaps a maid collected it while cleaning, and delivered it to the stable."

"Indeed."

"Shall I have it sent to your manor when it is found?"

"Only if it's within the day. Otherwise, return it to me when I come for the young lady's next lesson. If all goes well, it might be her last."

"Of course, my Lady. Is there anything else I can do for you?"

"No, I'll be leaving now. The orphanages require their due of my time herding those energetic little children about."

As the pair leave, Clara slowly lets out her breath and allows her white-knuckle grip on the crop to relax a little. It suddenly feels much heavier in her hands. As heavy as the promise not to retaliate against the Baroness.

Staring at the leather in the dimming light, she comes to a decision. Even if her Lady gets mad about it, the maid is the one who stole it, so the maid is the one who will be punished for it.

What's the worst that could happen?