Laying inside the stiff warm sheets of the bedroll, Sonnia for the longest time ever dreamt peacefully within her own mind.
Falling into a deep sleep induced by fatigue, sickness and other stressful factors it had been a while since Sonnia had been this comfortable while falling asleep ever since she together with Milky were shipped into the island.
Coming here made Sonnia feel once in her life that she was lucky to be blind, even though she used to wish for sight almost all the time, at least now she came to understand how horrible sight could truly be when the object or event that you are looking at was simply not something the eyes could bear to view.
This all came to be when she had Milky once describe a event to her that occurred when they stumbled upon another female prisoner far away who was surrounded by a gang of male prisoners, Sonnia had discovered them first since her perceptive range using her [Life Vision] was far longer then the eyes of Milky who could even see in the dark, plus her [Life Vision] was also not obstructed by objects making her vision very on point and straight even if the only thing she could see was the life force of a living being.
They were merely passing by at the time when they discovered them, Sonnia was full on expecting the chastity of the female prisoner to be ravaged beyond belief and be then put into their servitude but what happened next or at least what she heard from Milky describing the events went way beyond that, so much so that she just had to stop Milky from talking just so she wouldn’t vomit the lunch she had just eaten and waste food.
Sonnia was never a fighter, because she was blind and could only see the life force of a individual and nothing beyond that she had never once encountered a life threatening or violent situation, if she had she wouldn’t have survived, ever since she was born Sonnia only remembered her life being protected by the strength and authority of another, her father.
But calling that person her father was not something she liked, even though she referred to him as such in his presence, she never once called him that in her mind and simply called him a monster whenever she thought about him.
After all the only thing Sonnia ever was to her father was a tool for gaining wealth.
Collin Fen Dirork was the name of her detestable father, he was a noble hailing from a declining Baron household of nobility affiliated with the Gastel empire, a powerful [Sword Master] at that too gaining merit on the battlefield with the moniker of Ruthless Blade Collin as he would always kill someone whenever he drew his blade no matter what.
Collin was the only male in his family and also a only child, his father dying from alcohol poisoning behind a gambling table just as Collin was making a name for himself, leaving his helpless and incompetent mother behind who didn’t know a single thing about the duties of a lord and rather preferred to spend the hard earned money of the citizens through lavish dresses and finest jewels.
Ruthless, unreasonable, disciplined, strict and cruel, not only to others but much more so to himself, Collin only knew how to swing his sword which is why even though he was renowned he was still not able to keep his falling household from declining as that required far more then swinging your sword, skills that he simply did not possess or could comprehend that easily.
As such he would frequently get into financial issues regarding his territory because of his lack of ability regarding money making ventures and administration.
Sooner or later Collin would not be able to keep his territory together and ultimately fall into ruin, and even though Collin official already had a male heir with one more son and daughter of fitting age in reserve, none of his children were suitable or skilled enough for the task, its for this reason that Collin decided he needed more loyal helpers with suitable skills to manage his territory for after he died and when his heir would take the position to not let his territory be turned into shambles.
He went about this problem in a quite eccentric manner, since Collin wanted loyal helpers he figured that people who shared his blood would be the most reliable, he already had a lot of wives and concubines who bore his children even though they weren’t recognized meaning they couldn’t inherit anything together with hundreds of illegitimate children scattered all across the empire from his frequent outings and military campaigns.
It was easy for him choose but since the person who was going to manage and make money for the house was going to be intimately involved with the territory he wanted to choose someone who couldn’t inherit the title even if they were of his blood.
For this reason he limited his selection to [Half-breeds] since all [Half-breeds] were infertile until they reached high-rank the Gastel empire imposed the rule that no [Half-breed] can inherit the title of nobility without the emperors permission first.
And since the people who would make money and administrate the territory would be [Merchants] or other production classes it wasn’t likely that they were ever going to be able to become a high-rank creature giving Collin the confidence that only the inheritors he approved of prior could inherit the title.
This is how Sonnia together with 15 other children who were all [Half-breeds] were chosen to enrich and benefit the territory, they were all either going to become [Merchants] or any other production classes for the sake of the territory.
No one was allowed to decline and those that did met with the iron fist of Collin which not only hit them but more importantly hit their other important relatives the people who took care of them like Sonnia’s mother who was already not very well as she was forced to follow Collin when she was captured by him and forced to become his slave in a environment she was not very used to which is why she couldn’t handle it very well.
Sonnia initially hated the fact that she had to help somebody who treated both her and her mother that badly, and even though Sonnia was the child of forced copulation between her mother and Collin, Sonnia’s mother never explicitly took it out on Sonnia always caring for her with love and devotion since she was still her child.
Its for this reason and the love Sonnia’s mother had gifted her that Sonnia decided that she would do everything she could to change their situation, she may not have been able to change anything then but at the very least Sonnia wanted her mother to live in peace where she wouldn’t be treated like she was back then, like a slave, humiliated and mocked by everyone in the house.
The other children must have had the same idea as they all wanted either better lives for the people who were important to them or better lives for themselves and rise from the bottom.
At the age of 10 when she finally became a adult and was able to decide her path in life, her class, Sonnia without a second thought became a [Merchant] since it was the only profession that didn’t heavily require her vision to make use of.
She started out small, having made prior research on the topic of commerce and economy she first decided to make profit through the food market, since their territory couldn’t feed everyone with the lack of food it had every year, which caused a lot of deaths, she thought that she could make a nifty profit by taking advantage of that fact while also feeding the people to strengthen the economy on the territory.
She didn’t exactly trade the food for money since the territory was already poor and instead opted to trade it for other goods like clothes, tools and raw materials.
The money she used to start up her business came from Collin as well, he in fact gave each of them start up funds and told them that if they messed up with the money somehow he would not only demand it back from them physically but also from the people they loved putting quite a bit of pressure as nobody wanted to fail when the punishment could be severe.
Of course some inevitably couldn’t do anything but fail, which was met with a horrible end not quite death but worse for both the person and the relative which made the others only more fearful of failure.
On a interesting note only Sonnia became a [Merchant] everyone else thought that it was safer to choose a production class and make items to sell for profit then trade items which seemed much too difficult and daunting and sometimes even similar to gambling then actual skill, nobody wanted to risk it and instead took the safest method to make money while only Sonnia started her own business.
And she succeeded too, buying food from a external source and trading it in her territory she was able to quickly amass a pile of items that would usually be seen as junk by others but to Sonnia those were her treasures.
The territory always lacked something somewhere, using those items she could easily fill the places that lacked a certain something while also gathering more items or garnering favors from others to be used later through the use of the [Contract] skill.
Starting with 1 it soon became 2 which then became 4, so on and so forth Sonnia quickly spread her connections creating a incredibly wide network of people and information she could control.
Sonnia was uncannily gifted when it came to [Management] and [Administration], she would always know when to put how many people and which people and most importantly she always knew what to say and what not say in front of those people when trying to convince them, her methods were both soft and hard making it clear that she always meant business no matter what.
Her spread of influence in the territory was also not something that could easily challenged as well as almost everyone knew that Sonnia had connections to the baron household that held the territory, most frightening being the Baron himself who was notorious for being incredibly cruel and a powerful figure, nobody wanted to offend such individual especially not on his own turf, but there was one fool hardy gang who once tried to resist by not letting themselves being easily controlled and hindering with Sonnia’s plans antagonizing the citizens, Sonnia only needed to report to Collin once before he himself went over to the gang and publicly executed them in front of the citizens in a grotesque manner, he didn’t leave even one behind and even reached out with his hand towards their relatives and people they loved creating a horrifying scene that Sonnia somewhat regretted for causing.
Since then nobody had made any noise of resistance against Sonnia as she official became the spokes person for the Baron who showed his might.
Collin was also satisfied with Sonnia’s results, even though at the beginning she was almost always behind the others when it came to making profits, as time went on and she made more connections her profits started to climb while the others rarely ever budged from their monthly earnings.
Collins was so satisfied in fact that he even gave the right of managing the territory to Sonnia but only partially giving the other half to his successor his son Hubert in hopes of teaching him how to manage the territory himself.
Hubert was just like Collins, he only knew how to swing the sword, inheriting the same personality he wasn’t quite pleased with sharing authority with his half-sister and a [Half-breed] nonetheless, because of this he frequently tried to mess with Sonnia making things difficult for her which made her frustrated at the beginning, but as time went on Sonnia used her clever wit to quickly make Hubert less hostile to herself giving him the impression of being a loyal subject, this in fact caused Hubert to put all of the management and administrative responsibilities on Sonnia as they had stroke a deal with each other where Sonnia would disguise her effort for Huberts giving the boy almost all of the key credit while she herself only kept what was left to give the impression that Hubert was learning and doing well.
Collin never noticed anything wrong, since he wasn’t interested in management and administration, he simply believed that his son was actually doing well and accepted the results.
The territory within a span of a year stabilized and became more functioning.
In the second year the territory started to produce wealth.
Sonnia’s and her mother’s standing in the household also increased with more accomplishments under her belt, those that used to mock her and her mother quickly started to run away from them and even though some things still didn’t change, at least then life started to become far more bearable to daughter and mother then it was before.
All of this Sonnia accomplished in 2 years at the age of 12, spreading her net through the entire territory she now knew almost every nook and cranny there was, every wall became her ears and eyes, there was nothing she couldn’t see or hear if it was in the territory and slowly she started to reach her hand into other territories.
Soon enough Sonnia made a plan to start peddling the goods her territory produced into other territories, she would leave simple directives to Hubert who could at least do that much keeping the territory self-sufficient while she was away, she even wanted to take her mother along for the ride to enjoy the trip together as family.
Sonnia was confident that she could convince her father with her proposal since he never declined if it meant he could gain more wealth, her obvious agreed but only this time he put up a condition.
-I’ll allow you to go sell your goods, but your mother she will stay here, I don’t think a frail woman like her can take long travels so it the best if she stays at home..
-ugh…y-yes father, you are right..
Staring at her with hard eyes, even though Sonnia couldn’t see it she could still feel the glare he was drilling through her head making it difficult to breath with how imposing he was.
Sonnia obviously understood why Collin didn’t want her mother to come with her, it had nothing to do with the fact that Sonnia’s mother was frail, Collin was simply taking Sonnia’s mother as a hostage, in case Sonnia got the bright idea to leave, Collin wanted Sonnia to think twice before she did anything since he had her dear mother with him.
Sonnia couldn’t say anything against that, in the end even she knew that nothing had really changed, even though she had so much influence she was still a dog under Collins beg and call, if it was just her maybe Sonnia could have risked it but with her mother who was everything she had there was no way she would go through it.
If only Sonnia had strength, the power to challenge Collin directly, she could have saved herself together with her mother, but such was not the case she was a [Merchant] a blind one at that making combat even more impossible.
That night Sonnia curled up within the embrace of her mother, Sicily, Sonnia’s mother was already asleep smiling as she felt the warmth of her daughter nesting within her bosom, the clean and new sheets coupled with the new bed inside a equally new and huge room without dust or dirt made the sleep all the more comfortable if you think about the fact they used to sleep in a storage room a year ago.
But Sonnia couldn’t sleep, wide awake she thought about the fact that she couldn’t take her mother with her on her travels and that she would have to leave her behind all alone inside this horrible house full of horrible people, even though their standing improved, the wives and the some of the concubines still would frequently harass them, much more so since the stubbornly believed that they were a threat to their standing when in reality it was all just a false alarm.
Sonnia would usually always take the time to visit her mother at every chance she got, to make sure nothing of that sort happened, Sicily was a very docile after all even though she was a [Cave Witch] who were known to be fierce and cruel she was no such person and because of her out of place personality she was thought of as weak which lead to her exile where Collin found her near a mountain out under the sun.
Sicily was not much of a beauty but she was still above average within [Human] standards, her [Cave Witch] characteristics also made her exotic which lead to Collin picking her up forcefully and having his way with her as he liked to collect woman like objects.
Sicily suffered through a lot, but she always smiled at Sonnia telling her that everything was okay and that she shouldn’t cry singing her a song whenever it was tough, if it wasn’t for her mother Sonnia wouldn’t know what she would have done and where she would be right now. And even though it was because of Sonnia their standing had improved so much and made them no longer live in a storage room, Siciliy still stayed the same knowing that the only thing she could do for her daughter was encourage her and give her warm hugs.
In reality Sicily was quite aware that she was a burden to her daughter, but she was also aware that it wasn’t time for her to let go when she was still so weak.
Eventually Sonnia fall asleep from tiredness and when Sonnia fell asleep, Sicily woke up noticing the unrest in her daughter while she was sleeping singing to her in the native tongue of her people.
Sonnia dreamt, dreaming of a lullaby that made her want to dream more for even a second longer.
A Place Of Legends 