Time had passed once more and now I was over fifty years old. Throughout the last years it was war after war, and it really took a toll on me. You see, I’m writing this after having decided to do my final show to the world, leaving this world forever.

I realized that either my ideals were flawed, my partners wrongly chosen, or I had made other mistakes along the way and even though I tried to fix them, my people wouldn’t support me, they were so infatuated with the original ideals I had taught them of, so unless I scientifically proved to them that they could be better in a different way, they wouldn’t accept it. And even then, they’d probably argue that it was because of the beliefs in science that such an option was found.

My sister, who we managed to save, was actually scarred all over her body because at some point she was forced to work, or that’s what she told me. I suspect that she was victim of violence from another place, which she was too shy or embarrassed to say. I could see in her face that she wasn’t telling the truth, but I hoped that she’d tell me herself and I wouldn’t need to search for her past in order to learn what had happened to her.

Alas after five years I had enough and sent a few people to search what had happened to her within the thirty or so years we had been separated. It turned out that she had indeed realized her dream of having her own restaurant for a few years, before things turned south and she started to fall in debt in order to keep her place afloat.

But the situation became too dire as her debt only kept increasing and one day the debt collectors came and took everything within her property to “salvage” a part of cash, but the debt hadn’t fully disappeared and now, without a way to create more cash, she was taken as property of the main debtor, while he had paid for the rest of her debt.

In the city she was in slavery was allowed and she had just turned into a slave. There were some laws here and there about the limits of what she could be forced to do or be done to, but they were very vague, so the owners had almost a free reign on what they could do.

My investigators didn’t manage to find much information about what had happened during the three years on which she was enslaved, but after the city had been taken over by another religion and important leaders killed, she had turned into a different person.

Before her experiences she was very outgoing and gave her opinion out at almost every opportunity, but now she was timid and looked down most of the time and kept her distance from most people. She stayed within her new home, given to the slaves in exchange for work, which was better conditions than what they had before, so most accepted. And the ones who didn’t… well they kept their previous position, just with a new boss.

During the next few years, she was coerced to work at different odd jobs depending on the needs of the city, but even after her traumatic experience of the last few years she couldn’t keep completely quiet and commented to her superiors about the mistakes she believed they were making.

They didn’t like this attitude and was sent to a reformation camp, similar to the ones I had built around my country, but with different morals installed. All of this information was gathered not from the people that were over her, but rather the ones that were aside of her. Some even told my investigators that they tried making a friendship with her, but she was cold to anyone and everyone.

She spent less than a year in this center because, once more, the tides of war had turned, and the rulers of the land had changed. Everyone within the center was freed, but also offered a stable job from a variety of options, one of them being a cook. She took the job and was surprised by how well it went, because when it was her job and property, things had gone exactly the opposite way.

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She had been boycotted by someone, though I didn’t manage to learn who had done that, but I suspected that the people she owed money to be the ones to blame. They probably had targeted her from the start and when they saw that her business was actually doing well, they took action against her progress.

Now, when she worked as a cook, she constantly received congratulations for how well she cooked and everything she cooked was fully eaten. She was working in the army, so perhaps it was because of their hungry stomachs that they enjoyed her food that much, she had commented to another cook, but she still felt good because of this positive feedback.

Alas, this only lasted for so long until the soldiers she was working with perished in an impossible battle. These people were the ones that had later negotiated with Petrió about her, their relationship and the possibility of letting the two of them to live a peaceful life.

She had no knowledge of his brother’s situation until she was taken prisoner by the people of the new country once they found out the possible relationship between the two, because she wasn’t interested in politics and wanted to explore the world without really caring what happened forwards… at first, but then she felt that she had more important things to take care of. Her own life, for example.

And even when she was taken prisoner at first, she thought it was because she had worked for the enemy’s army and everyone else had been taken too, but she realized that they were met with a worse fate, death.

She was surprised that she wasn’t tortured, unlike other prisoners within the same facility, based on the sounds she could hear at different times of the day. At the same time, she could never confirm her suspicions because she was never let out of her prison and the few glances which she could take through the door were of a wall standing on the opposite side of her. There was no window pointing outwards, instead the ventilation of the room was targeted in the same direction as the door.

Most of the time she was alone with her thoughts, but sometimes a few officials came into her room, looked at her and talked between each other and then left the room once more. The guards also checked her room for any possible hidden possessions she could have every second day, which she turned into a game due to how bored she was. She tried changing her room’s layout as much as possible between two checks in order to see the reactions of the guards.

Depressingly, there was none. She didn’t understand how they couldn’t react to the change. Perhaps they had known about it before coming in, somehow? But there was nothing but walls all around her… She checked for magic, but they were just plain, normal walls.

When she behaved weirdly, they did react cautiously and surprised, so it wasn’t that they had nerves of steel… She marked one of the guards to check on his emotional status later, so long he wasn’t too far in order to find out what had happened.

Two days later, she found out the truth. It turned out that the guards weren’t the same, instead every two days they were changed and the guard she had marked before was a few floors beneath her. When she commented on their identities being different, the four guards that were checking on her room were shocked at how she found out about it, because they were fully covered with their armor and their behavior was quite similar as well.

Her security level was increased, and she was taken into another room, larger in size, though now she was locked out of using magic and there were guards constantly watching over her, even when she was doing her necessities or bathing herself.

She tried to play the shy card of not wanting others to see her naked, but these guards wouldn’t break. They were almost like statues, though unlike statues, they moved and reacted to her behavior. One time she was feeling cold, so she snuggled within the blankets, but they were suddenly removed from her due to her “erratic” behavior and she had to sleep in a certain pose from a range of positions she could choose.

Next thing that happened to her was that a little bit of her blood was taken, in order to find out whether she really was Petrió’s sister or not. They couldn’t find their relationship, but they could confirm her species which would limit the options.

She was indeed from the same species as him and from then she was given better food and better treatment until they took a few pictures of her and then returned to the same moldy food and old clothes. These pictures were the same ones that were shown to his brother to negotiate about her.

After a few months she was freed from the prison and taken by the new rulers of the land, which surprisingly was her brother, though he looked a bit worried. Not for her, but something else. She realized this, but if he wanted to talk about it with her, he’d have to come to her, she wouldn’t pry into his problems.