« on: November 25, 2017, 07:19:05 AM »
11/25/772
Hate. There have only been two occasions in my life where I think what I felt towards someone, or a group of someones, was hate. The first involved a man back home, one by the name of Sicart Picavet. While I had certainly had people belonging to the Richemuloise gentry as my clients in the past, Sicart, despite being a merchant, was many times more magnanimous and charitable than they were. His coffers seemed to be bottomless and he seemed to always have his thumb on the pulse of Ste. Ronges. We Richemuloise guard our secrets well, yet he seemed to be be well-informed about everybody and everyone.
I imagine if I went back to Ste. Ronges now, I would see a coat-of-arms hanging from the bars of the wrought-iron gate, and him rubbing shoulders with the various blue-bloods, talking about the massive, sprawling estate with huge tracts of land he managed to acquire. In Richemulot, and arguably in other places as well, power is derived from what you know, and Sicart seemed to be learning more and more about everyone in Ste. Ronges, with each passing day. Furthermore, there seemed to be no limit to his ostentatious wealth, as his gifts to me grew more grandiose, more lavish.
I grew curious.
I eavesdropped upon his conversations, I rifled through the ledgers he kept, went through all the correspondence he had with those whom he called his business partners. Each time I did, I received a piece of the puzzle, and eventually, it all fit together -- with that, came a startling, horrifying revelation. The man who had became my benefactor was, in fact, a slaver, a man who made his money through contacts he had in the underworld specializing in human trafficking. They would capture men and women (mostly the latter) and see them transported across the border into Falkovnia -- their future, once they arrived there, would naturally prove to be a rather bleak one.
Anyway, Sicart seemed to notice I was acting differently around him, and must have realized I discovered the truth. In the middle of the night, two rather large, broad-shouldered men broke into my house, and tried to seize me from where I was in my bed -- I've no doubt they were sent by Sicart. I obviously didn't get captured by them, mostly because I ran. I ran until the soles of my feet began to bleed. I ran until I was out-of-breath, and continued on regardless. I ran until Ste. Ronges was but a speck resting miles behind where I stood.
Before all of this happened to me, I rather liked Sicart. He was charming, he was handsome. For the companionship I offered him, he, in exchange, allowed me to live not only comfortably, but luxuriously... and yet I grew to quickly hate the man, because it became clear to me that he was more than comfortable with having me clapped in irons and smuggled across the border into a nightmarish, horrifying country full of brutes and butchers, on the slim chance that I had become a liability. He made me leave Richemulot behind, forcing me to abandon everything I knew -- friends, the clients I dealt with before him, to start again elsewhere.
That was one occasion where I began to feel hate, and the other happened to me a few days ago, yet I am not certain who it is I hate more. Is it Sokolov and the Vos for what they did to me, or myself, because I was unable to do a single, solitary thing to stop them from doing what they did. The feeling of utter powerlessness I felt, that I still feel -- it is arguably worse than anything else that's followed in the wake of all this, worse than my lack of appetite, my need to retch, or the bad dreams I've been having.
Others are helping me get my revenge against Sokolov and his countrymen. Others, because I cannot hope to do anything myself. Easy as it is to wallow in despair as I have been, what I require is agency. Power, in whatever form that might take. Strength. I hope I might be able to find that here, in Krofburg.
« Last Edit: November 25, 2017, 02:00:06 PM by Better Dread than Dead »
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