Dolor was panting heavily as he slowed down after running for what seemed like the past hour. His time in the military had conditioned him to be used to running. In civilian life, it was made easier by the fact that there was no magic artillery shelling the ground underneath Dolor’s feet. “At least for now there isn’t artillery,” thought Dolor to himself, understanding perfectly that if things were to continue developing as they have so far today, it is likely that even that cold comfort might soon be taken away from him.
He needed to eat, he needed to drink, but most of all, he needed answers. Dolor has spent his whole life living as a manaless military grunt. The thought of being able to use magicarms was inconceivable to him. Yet that was the case. Dolor knew what he saw. He just did not understand how it could be possible. He approached the end of a dark alleyway that was connected to a busy street where citizens and their families were enjoying themselves at various food stalls, and musical and dance performances, while children rode in little toy cars powered by purple electric magic or floated above the street on the roof level in oversized teacups levitated by a pair of aeromancers. Dolor did not spot any RMs or SSB magents.
He entered into another side alley and sat on the floor behind a dumpster, holding the dagger between his knees while rubbing the rope and tying his wrists against the sharp edge of the magic blade. The rope quickly began to fray and was soon completely cut loose. That this worked surprised even Dolor and, having finally freed his hands from the rope, he rubbed his chafed wrists, fixed his hair, and dusted off his coat to make himself look a little more presentable, and, using a large group of factory workers returning from their holiday shift as cover, Dolor seamlessly slotted into the lively festive street and started walking down the avenue in the middle of the procession trying to not draw any attention to himself.
The walls of nearby buildings and the billboards lining the streets were covered in propaganda posters and spray-painted Conclave slogans. Despite his family background, or perhaps precisely because of it, Dolor never deeply thought about politics. It was a pointless waste of time, as far as he was concerned, and brought nothing but despair and ruin to him and his family. Living under the rule of the Conclave, or Crudele to be more precise, was everything Dolor had ever known. He found it hard to empathize with his parents, who opposed Crudele, thus condemning themselves and Dolor to fall from grace and be relegated to the life of a below-average existence, even by the manaless citizens' standards. He could never understand why his father would stand up to the Leader like he did. “Was this all about mother having an affair with the Leader?” Dolor thought, recalling the revelation made by the now-dead SSB magent Schmal, “Was there no other way to resolve this?”. Dolor waved off the thought. For now, he needed to focus on what to do next.
Dolor walked by a long line of giggling Young Pioneers, school children wearing uniforms with purple and gold satin neckties and armbands. All school children in FSRL, or all children (as education was universal and mandatory for all), were automatically a part of the Young Pioneers, which was the manifestation of the official state ideology in the basic education system, which lasted from the first to tenth grade. The organization fostered cooperation between students from upper and lower grades, where the upperclassmen would act as exemplars and mentors for their juniors, active participation in extracurricular events such as weekly neighborhood cleanups and yearly interschool sports competitions, and, most importantly, fostered loyalty to the Conclave and Artifex Crudele, to whom children dedicated many school plays, talent performances, crafts and arts, and other things signifying the undying loyalty of all the Republican youths to “Grandpa Crudele”, as he was often affectionately called in children’s poems, fairytales, and the jokes or anecdotes schoolkids used to share during breaks between their classes. Dolor remembered one such anecdote, which was popular among the schoolkids when he was one of them.
A pioneer returns home from school and says to his mother, “You wouldn’t believe whom I just saw on my way back from school, Mother!” said the pioneer
“Whom did you see, son?” asked the mother
“Grandpa Crudele! I was passing by his house and there he was, sitting outside his porch and shaving with a magic razor. Then he saw me looking at him and continued shaving,” said the student.
“How kind is our great Leader, my dear?” said the mother joyfully. "He could have slashed your face with the magic razor for looking at him without his permission, yet he let you return safely to me. We follow the Leader!”
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
image [https://i.imgur.com/8Dylowq.jpeg]
This general attitude described perfectly the way Dolor and most other citizens of the Republic felt about encounters or interactions with their state. Despite ostensibly portraying itself as a democratic political regime, where the long-oppressed citizens had finally overthrown the monarchy and built a nation for themselves, the overwhelming majority of citizens did not feel as if they were the owners of their country or that they had any sort of control over the decisions made by the Conclave. Instead, most people rightfully realized that the relationship between them and the State is one where they are nothing more but vassals whose obedience and loyalty are expected and whose dessent or discontent are never tolerated. Thus, the mother from the anecdote, displayed the unspoken reality of life in the FSRL, where one was happy to simply survive any contact with the state, especially its highest officials, unscathed and unharmed, and no one dared to even think about anything more.
Dolor realized that such jokes would not be tolerated among the schoolchildren today. After all, he grew up when the Conclave had only just come to power after overthrowing the monarchy, not to mention that he was the son of a Conclave official close to Crudele, so perhaps he could only get away with telling and hearing such jokes because of that. However, Dolor found it hard to imagine that even among the most privileged magic state schools, where the overwhelming majority of students are magekind, such jokes would be tolerated. The teachers and superintendents and local educational ministry bureaucrats would risk being "disappeared" in the middle of the night were they to allow such anti-Conclave propaganda to spread in their schools.
Dolor noticed a patrol of militiamen led by an SSB magent walking down the crowded street. They hadn’t noticed Dolor and, before they could, he quickly turned into the first side alley he happened upon. He moved quickly through cramped rows of small takeout restaurants and little old merchant ladies selling bundles of dried green herbs, the smell of which reminded Dolor of his childhood when his mother, regardless of how tired she was after work, would make him some herbal tea with sandwiches made of old dry baguette slices and butter cubes which she would bring home from work. Dolor did not know how his mother gained the baguettes and the butter, as she was not getting paid enough at the factory to afford to buy them at the universtore.
Whether she stole the leftovers from the factory kitchen, as Dolor always suspected, or perhaps a kind colleague used to give these foodstuffs to her, which was what his mother told him, these sandwiches seemed like luxury dining compared to the 'free food for all citizens' provided by the Republican government. This so-called generous offering comprised pouches of magically created consumable emulsion, each with a flavor as repugnant as the last. Revolutionary Purple was supposed to taste like grape jam, at least according to the packaging. Zealous Orange had an orange on it, the apple-flavored Green Vanguard claimed to taste like apples, and then there was the worst of all—the Brown Herald, supposedly chocolate-flavored but reminiscent of wet mud charred by magic fire. The thought of the last one almost made Dolor puke when he remembered the revolting taste and texture of the Brown Herald, often issued to him in school and the army, which to Dolor tasted like wet mud charred by magic fire. “Is this what real chocolate tastes like?” Dolor used to think to himself. He didn’t know, as things like chocolate and real fruit were only concepts to someone like him, as he never tasted either of those things because he grew up as a manaless child. For that same reason, he did, however, know intimately the taste of wet mud charred by magic, as he had to taste it frequently, both military and civilian.
In his reminiscing, Dolor had not noticed how he reached his destination, an inconspicuous residential apartment block. Near the corner of the building, Dolor saw a barely visible staircase. He walked down the stairs until he found himself faced with a big metal door. Dolor heard barely audible sounds of muffled voices and music from behind the door. An illuminated sign hung above the door. The sign appears to have been slightly edited by the patrons of the establishment with black markers and now read “The bLower of D*ckS”, obscuring completely the original name on the sign.
Dolor gave the metal door three distinct, equally spaced sharp knocks. He heard heavy steps approaching the door and saw a tiny sliver of light in the eyehole as it opened up from the other side. The bolts on the other side began clanking and sliding back and the door opened, revealing the speakeasy’s interior. People were smiling as they shared drinks and food and danced to the tune of a band of traveling musicians. The people seemed genuinely happy, but Dolor could feel, that it was not because they were happy about the Anniversary celebrations, but because this was a true oasis of freedom, where all could finally let loose after having to walk on eggshells all day at work. Just a small oasis in the shadows of the Capital City’s back alleyways.
“Get in,” demanded the large orc, dressed in a formal black-tie outfit, as his enormous frame emerged from behind the door.