The statue marchers are walking proudly and boldly through the festival. They continue shouting racial epithets and human supremacist slogans. There are also a number of pro war slogans as well. Most of them are a variation of “Death to the Empire!”. Some of them are a variation of “Death to the demons!”
A lot of them are basically telling the crowd that they wish to exterminate all races on the Empire’s continent. Every single beastkin, every single draconid, every single demon, every single dragon…
Angelidis, Dzan and Sigvor can tell why they wish for the Empire’s utter annihilation. It isn’t because of Semjaza being humanity’s mortal enemy. It isn’t because the Federation and the Empire have technically been at war for thousands of years. It is because of the Empire’s racial character.
In that place, there are only free demihumans. Demihumans who have lived over ten thousand years, living and dying while not under human subjugation.
Their race still stands, still exists, even to this day. They have not perished from their own incompetence as a race. Their independent existence on that continent is a contradiction to the greater theory of human supremacy. The lower races should be under human subjugation. That is their place, as Osva has always taught.
If those lesser races live outside human rule, they should die out all on their own. That’s how it is supposed to be. That continent is an eyesore to them. There are billions of demihumans who are free, whose ancestors have never known subjugation. They have lived and survived on those lands for ten thousand years. Without going extinct.
Contradiction.
There is one way to solve this contradiction. Those demihumans must not be like the demihumans on the Federation’s land. Those demihumans must be feral, disobedient… a wild, undomesticated race. It stands to reason that they will never submit. They will only exist over there as a threat to humanity forever. An aberration.
To the supremacists, they are like a race of animals that have never been domesticated. They are a pure threat. Even if they weren’t, even if they simply wished to live separate from the Federation, this cannot be allowed. They are of no use to humanity, so the human supremacists believe. A demihuman with no purpose to humanity is unnatural.
Now is the time to restore nature. The human supremacists plan to do so by exterminating that continent.
Some among them must believe that, just by cleansing those lands, they can bring back demihuman slavery. They can show the Federation’s demihumans the truth. Demihumans cannot live independent of humanity. Such a state of affairs is purely unnatural.
Using that as an excuse, they can subjugate the demihumans once again.
Marching through this festival is one more way that the out and out human supremacists can pull their fellow humans to their cause. They can turn their implicit dominance over the demihumans into explicit dominance. They can show those humans around them that they still have all the authority. They’re still being protected by their church.
The Federation has not been thriving over the past few years. Their standards of living have decreased and their luxuries are starting to dissolve. The high unemployment rate in Tritol that was only affecting the demihumans is now affecting them.
But, through all of that, they can do whatever they want to the lesser races. Even if their lives aren’t improving right now, they can at least still treat the non-humans as playthings. Humiliation will serve well to show them their place. That’s what the statue marches are always about.
So far today, the march has been tame. But, the marchers are becoming more fearless. They start harassing the festival stall operators. All they need to do is walk up to the stalls and do what comes naturally to them, hateful as they are.
There are a number of food stalls along the road where the marchers continue to walk. They serve unclean and boring demihuman food. Three marchers, middle aged men, notice other marchers going over to some stalls and harassing people.
That looks like fun to them.
The three of them see a festival food stall that looks somewhat shabby. The one leading the group walks over to the stall.
It’s made of wood and there is a rough looking grill behind the counter. A man and his wife, both beastkin, are operating the grill, a young couple. They probably wheeled the grill in, part of their livelihood. The man and woman are not facing the leader of the three staring at them. Their faces are expressionless. The three men don’t like that.
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They want to see these two get mad. That would be fun to see.
“This is quite a cheap looking stall… the fuck was I expecting exactly…” The leader says. The young man stops moving for a moment, but returns to his work. The leader smiles.
The mutt can be provoked.
The lead marcher and his friends take out their weapons. He has a short sword, one of them has a claymore, and the third has a longsword.
The silent man has his own weapon. He likes to defend himself using a longsword as well. The leader notices the sword in its sheath hanging from the man’s belt. He holds onto the sheath for a moment. His heart races. His wife stands behind him, slightly afraid, trying hard not to show it.
The young beastkin man looks at the marchers with defiance, but then his expression falls.
The wife sees too. Behind the leader and his two buddies is a guard. He’s standing to the side, not interfering, but watching the situation carefully. It’s almost as if he’s daring the beastkin man to start something. He is wearing heavy armor, all of it magically enforced.
The young man clenches his jaw while his wife discreetly packs away their profits for the day. She also tries to pull away the grill, its wheels loudly rolling across the concrete road surface.
However, the lead marcher stabs his shortsword into the grating of the grill. The woman pulls her hands away in surprise, yelping slightly. The man pulls her behind him while just looking over at the lead marcher, still defiant.
“...” He wants to speak but he understands how things are right now. The guard is not doing anything even now. He’s just standing there. He averts his eyes from the man but he doesn’t want to leave yet. He could still salvage his grill at this point if these men were to get bored and leave…
“Oh? Not gonna step up, pussy? Are you happy with your weak man?” The lead marcher says with a sneer while staring at the young man’s wife. She still wears a cold expression, but the lead marcher can see her lips trembling just slightly.
The man and his wife back away from the stall to the side and watch what the marchers will do now. The wife holds her arms and the husband holds her calmly while staring at the marchers.
“Come on, guys! Let’s have some fun!” The lead marcher says.
The two lackeys raise their swords and swing down at the man’s food stall. They swing over and over, until the stall is unrecognizable. It fell easily to their strong weaponry. Other marchers are doing the same to other food and exhibition stalls.
They are intimidating the beastkin stall attendants and destroying their stall setups, all while the guards wait to the side…
One or two of the stall operators stand their ground, more angry than rational even with the guards standing to the side. However, before they even connect a swing, they are beset by the heavily armored city peacekeepers. Some of these demihumans are merely arrested, to be tried later for attempted assault to the fullest extent of the law.
Two of them are beaten bloody.
“The cops seem different today, don’t they, Dzan?” Sigvor asks, shouting over the angry crowd so that Dzan can hear her. “They’re never this straightforward about whose side they’re on.”
The demihuman counter protesters only grow angrier as the marchers go to stall after stall. Each place where the marchers go to harass people have their own crowds of angry counter protesters. They cannot do anything substantial, otherwise they will be the ones who are beaten and arrested.
Sometimes, the marchers will be intimidated by the counter protester crowds. In those cases, they’ll just harass the attendants and move on. Other groups of marchers are more bold, cutting loose as they want to. Expecting nobody to fight back, they reduce some stalls to sawdust.
Dzan can see all of this happening along this road as the marchers slowly make their way to Maz square. He replies to Sigvor.
“Hm. Yeah. And look at the marchers, it looks like they know what to expect. Normally they wouldn’t go around just destroying everything. What’s wrong with them?” Dzan says, already exhausted.
“‘We are the 33rd, we are the 33rd’. That’s not what they normally shout, is it? Is that who they’re going to be building? The 33rd divinity?”
“Yeah…” Dzan has heard of this divinity.
An atrocious existence. She presided over multiple rebellions of beastkin and demihuman slaves. Her solution was to exterminate large numbers of demihumans as if cutting off a gangrenous limb. Apparently, she was favored by Osva for her quick solutions and disciplined obedience.
She didn’t spare the children or the elderly.
Entire bloodlines were wiped clean.
“So, that’s what that shit is about…” Shaula says. Angelidis just explained to Ajax and her what the “33rd” refers to. The two of them have gotten over themselves, their anger. Angelidis has told them something they can do.
It’s simple and Shaula is ok with it. If they see anyone about to be harmed by the marchers, they can defend them. That’s all they really need to do.
They can still do that much without confronting the police. For example…
“Hey, where the fuck do you think you’re going?” The marcher and his two friends walked over towards the food stall operator and his wife. The man only starts walking faster with his wife in front of him. His grill and stall have been destroyed but his wife has secured their profits.
If they can just get away from here, they’ll be able to suffer minimal losses. The humiliation of being unable to defend his wife is not something he enjoys… But, it would not be good to die out here.
However, these three human pricks aren’t letting him leave that easily. They’re following him as his wife as they walk along the sidewalks away from the festival. What is their problem!? The lead marcher reaches out. He is about to touch the beastkin man’s shoulder, but someone bumps into him from his right.
“Hey! Can’t you see I’m…” The marcher turns his head to see a woman wearing a long, brown cloak over a dark red dress. He looks at her, a surprised expression on her face. Her teeth are too sharp.