Hanging on the wall behind her desk in her office in Moscow was a picture of Alexander the Great astride his horse, robed in a coat that was made from a lion's pelt. Sonya had a similar coat, though hers was made from the pelt of a tiger that she had killed with her bare hands when it had snuck up on her party during a hunting trip in Siberia. Sonya had accompanied her father on the trip, her father being Alexander Kruschenko, the CEO of EDM (Energy, Defense and Mining) Enterprises, one of Russia's wealthiest oligarchs. Also in their hunting party was General Mikhail Golonov, a high ranking official in the Russian army. It didn't take long for news of Sonya's strength and heroism to make the rounds among the elites of Russian society, all of whom wanted Sonya in their social circles. At the time Sonya was twenty four years old and studying for a degree in mechanical engineering at the University of St. Petersburg having already obtained a degree in geology from the same institution in preparation for a career at EDM Enterprises. While working toward her engineering degree she had participated in a student exchange program that saw her spend six months at the University of Colorado in Denver where she learned of a method for discovering unexploited mineral reserves at levels deeper than what mines traditionally descended to. Armed with this knowledge Sonya returned home and prevailed upon her father to start buying up abandoned mines in Russia that had been exploited decades earlier using rudimentary equipment and methodologies. Alexander trusted his daughter and gave her the position of head of project development at the company and told her to go for it. Sonya traveled around the country with a team of surveyors, lawyers and financiers and in the end acquired over two dozen abandoned mines that were exploited for copper, tin, aluminum, gold, platinum and iron. Of the mines that she acquired, eleven showed potential for further exploitation, and once the mines had gotten started up again the whole project was shaping up to be more lucrative than Sonya had imagined. The mines were massively underexploited and Alexander's investment of 3 billion rubles to acquire the mines was going to become worth over 100 billion. Because of his daughter's brilliance in bringing about such a windfall, Alexander decided that he had no choice but to name his daughter the new CEO of the company. To celebrate the announcement Alexander held a lavish soiree at their estate on the outskirts of St. Petersburg. For the party Sonya wore a blue silk dress with a diamond necklace and earrings. She descended the stairs to the drawing room of the house looking like royalty, but it wasn't her dress or her jewelry that the guests were stunned by, it was the huge white lion with lavender eyes that walked down the steps by her side. At first the guests were afraid but after a few moments it became clear that the lion was completely under Sonya's control and there was no need for panic. The lion quickly became the centre of attention at the party, with guests going up to Sonya to ask her where she had gotten it and if they could pet it. Sonya told them that they were welcome to pet it and that she had rescued him from a circus where he was being mistreated. This was a lie. Sonya had woken up four days earlier and found the lion laying on the floor at the foot of her bed. Unlike the party guests Sonya felt no fear upon first seeing the lion. She immediately recognized that it wasn't an ordinary lion and that it had appeared in her room because it had identified something special in her and had selected her to be by its side.

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Sonya never allowed herself to be separated from the lion for even a moment. The lion went with her into the office every day, on business trips and to social events. While in Rwanda on business, one of the businessmen with whom she was looking to close a deal compared Sonya to Nyarvirazi, a female character from an African legend who became queen of the lions. Sonya liked the story and after she had returned to Moscow and told her friends and colleagues about it they all started calling her by the nickname Nyarvi. Sonya started doing research into legends involving lions and read about Hercules killing the Nemean lion with his bare hands, Samson killing a lion with his bare hands, and Cyrene killing a lion with her bare hands. She arrived at the conclusion that the tiger attacking her hunting party had not been a chance encounter but rather a trial to which the lion had subjected her to test her worthiness. She decided that she had to devote her life to ensuring that she was living up to the faith that the lion had placed in her when it had chosen her.

She had been the CEO of EDM for eight years and in those eight years she had transformed the company from a Russian and Eastern European powerhouse into a global powerhouse. Under her leadership the company had expanded its energy business by building power stations in several African, South American and Asian countries; the company had also become the second largest exporter of natural gas from Russia after Gazprom. The company's defense division had also experienced strong growth having been awarded the contract to design and build the R49 Foxwing, a stealth fighter jet with capabilities similar to those of the US's F35. The business's growth had been so strong that Sonya had started to feel a lack of fulfillment from her role as CEO. Despite being named three times by Forbes magazine as the number one business woman in the world, being a permanent fixture on the Times 100 list and one of the stars every year at the Davos Economic Forum, Sonya increasingly looked upon the business world as one in which she was not reaching her full potential. To reach her full potential, Sonya believed that she would have to turn to politics. With all of the connections that she had made since the day when she had killed the tiger it wouldn't be at all difficult for her to put together a well resourced political operation, but that could only take her so far. Sonya's ultimate goal was the presidency, to carve her name into history alongside Catherine's as one of the great female rulers of Russia. Standing in her way however was the current president of Russia Vladimir Kolschonski, who had spent the better part of the last two decades strengthening his grip on power by installing loyalists in key positions throughout the government and the military and overseeing a widespread crackdown on dissidents and the press. Ousting Kolschonski from power wasn't going to be easy, but having set her sights on the presidency Sonya was determined not to give up until she had found a way to do so.