We Follow the Leader - Dystopian Progression Fantasy

Dolor did not stick around to see if the SSB magents were dead. He started running away as soon as Schmal fell on the floor. The last thing Dolor saw, as he ran away through the maze of Capital’s back alleys, was Mons’ and Schmal’s still bodies stretched on the snow next to each other. Two pools of differently colored blood around them grew towards each other until they eventually overlapped and combined into one big blood puddle of a peculiar color. Dolor’s hands were still tied. The rope was enchanted with magic and thus could not be cut conventionally. Dolor thought of using the dagger to cut his wrist loose but ultimately decided that this level of fine magical maneuvering of a deadly weapon was still beyond him, considering he had lived his whole life until this point, never imagining himself using magic. Not to mention, the grizzly sight of the SSB magents drowning in their blood and viscera had also dissuaded him from trying anything that would involve using the dagger on himself.

He made his way down the dark maze of streets until he eventually reached High Chairman Avenue, the central and widest street in Capital City leading directly to the heavily guarded Government Quarter (GQ), which housed the Office of the High Chairman and the Conclave Presidium, among many other state and administrative buildings. The GQ, as it was most often referred to, was inaccessible to anyone who was not a state bureaucrat or a high-ranking government bigwig. The existence of the “third class” of GQ inhabitants, namely servants and waitstaff of various kinds which served the “people’s chosen”, was always denied publicly and denounced as an “enemy disinformation campaign”, which as far as the Conclave was concerned, was any information that came from their internal or external enemies regardless of it being factual.

Hiding in a dark side alley, Dolor noticed the hustle and bustle coming from the street, which was not typical for this time of a workday. In the country of “mage laborers and peasants”, as it was advertised on the propaganda posters, all the laborers and peasants were manaless, while mages were “made for more noble pursuits”, as one of the mage commanders assigned to Dolor’s army unit told him before promptly running away from the battlefield and leaving his subordinates to their fates. Yet the streets were filled with the great unwashed manaless masses in the middle of the workday. Dolor leaned over and observed as groups of cheery citizens waved little flags and walked in a procession under the purple satin propaganda banners embroidered with gold lettering: “Proud to Work for the Benefit of the State”, “Magic Brings Equality”, “We Follow the Leader”, “To the Bright Future”. In all the commotion that happened to him in the last couple of hours, he forgot that today marked the 33rd Conclave Revolt Anniversary,

The Anniversary was the most beloved holiday among the citizens, not necessarily because of its symbolic meaning as a great turning point in their country’s history, but because it was the only statutory holiday and thus the only day most manaless could take off the grueling physical labor. It was not as if they could wander around town fairs and take part in street festivities; those privileges were reserved for the magekind. The manaless were resigned to the role of a backdrop of extras, walking in aimless processions down the Avenue and waving happily to the magekind families on the sidewalks, which, while humiliating, was better than yet another day in the mines or the factory floor.

Dolor noticed an SSB magent overlooking the area from an observation post, while small groups of the Republican Militia (RM), the regular law enforcement unit of the FSRL, were combing through streets with manahounds leashed and tamed by purple magic threads extending from the arms of the unit’s designated K9 officer. “This could be bad,” Dolor thought to himself as he melded back into the darkness of the side alley. If he could use magic now, he could also emit mana waves which could be sniffed out by the hounds. Dolor quickly proceeded down the dark alleyways to get as far away from the crowded main streets of the city.

He let out a sigh of relief as he found an isolated backstreet nook with a playground, constructed for the manaless children who were forced to live in this dark concrete-lined sack, which reminded Dolor of the plague barracks, where soldiers unfortunate enough to catch a contagious illness on the frontline were sent to prevent the spread of disease to the rest of the troops. Dolor had never seen one from the inside, but he imagined it would look like a scaled-down version of this dead-end neighborhood with its featureless gray concrete and walls so narrow they looked like they were closing in on him. Just as Dolor was about to sit on the swing, he heard the dreaded bark, followed by the piercing shrill of the militia whistle.

“Shit!” Dolor was startled but resisted the urge to run.

“Hey! You! Come here, let me see your passport!” yelled the K9 militiaman separating each short vocal burst distinctly, while pulling the barking manahound back by its purple magic leash.

Dolor had no intention of approaching the militiaman and his pet. He knew, that by now, the bodies of the two magents he ripped apart would have been discovered and the information about him would have been relayed down to every SSB and RM grunt and officer. He needed to run, but because of the dead-end alleyway he was in, the hound and its handler cut his only route to escape. For a moment, Dolor thought about fighting his way out by using the dagger, until he quickly realized that he still did not know how to use the magicarm (or magic as such, for that matter). But even if he were to dispose of this RM officer and his canine successfully, he would still be trapped in a maze of narrow backstreets that would be quickly blocked off by all the militiamen and SSB agents swarming the festive streets, before he could make it out of the labyrinth. “Right,” Dolor thought, “looks like there is no other choice.” He turned around with his hands up, while they were still tied with a reinforced rope from his earlier encounter with the SSB magents, and began slowly walking toward the K9 officer and the growling manahound.

“I follow the Leader, officer!” Dolor performed a proper, as far as it was possible with tied hands, military salute at the militiaman, which combined with his disheveled look and the worn-out state-issued military trench coat made him look like one of the many neglected and forgotten Campaign Veterans, who were omnipresent on the backstreets, in the underground stations, and other areas hidden from everyone’s sight. Despite paying a lot of lip service to “Our heroic CVs,” as state propaganda called them adding “who bring peace and reconciliation to the oppressed masses worldwide," the real state of affairs was much sadder. The heroes of the revolutionary struggle, now crippled and discarded by their Conclave overlords, could not “loiter in areas of public importance”, such as parks, busy streets, or town squares. They were thus relegated to live under bridges, in sewage canals, and in dead-end back alleys like the one Dolor was in.

“Hurry up, scum, come here and show me your passport!” commanded the militiaman while kicking the hound in the stomach, causing it to growl and whimper in pain simultaneously.

“I beg you, officer; I don’t want any trouble. I am just a CV who is down on his luck,” stated Dolor, thinking that blaming the government in the face of one of its highly weaponized officials would be a bad idea. “I lost my passport years ago, or maybe exchanged it for some booze,” pleaded Dolor with a chuckle that he hoped would sound believable.

“Are you deaf, you shit-eating bum? I ordered you to approach me fast and show me your documents,” the officer was either not persuaded by Dolor’s acting chops, or perhaps he lacked basic human compassion. Dolor was not confident enough in his acting skills to state that it was the latter.

“Okay, please, do not cast, I am unarmed,” lied Dolor, “I will do as you say”. Dolor started inching, albeit a little faster than before, toward the militiaman and his dog.

He needed to think of something within the next six steps that it would take him to be in the attack range of the officer and his increasingly agitated manahound, which the militiaman continued to ruthlessly choke with the leash and kick in the ribs with his heavy military boot. Five. Dolor still did not know what he should do. He noticed the militiaman’s utility belt. Four. Handcuffs were hanging menacingly from a loop on the left side, while a rectangular radio antenna was poking from underneath one of the belt slots on the right side. Three. The manahound was baring its teeth as the officer kept pulling on the purple magic leash, practically lifting the beast in the air by its neck as if he was trying to hang it. Dolor wondered whether the hound’s fury was aimed at him or its handler. Two. “The hound…”, Dolor was now almost within the reach of the hound’s teeth. One. A bloodcurdling scream escaped the militiaman’s lips as his cleanly chopped-off arm, previously holding the hound’s leash, hit the ground, spraying the concrete pavement with blood spurting out from the freshly severed vessels. The manahound, now liberated from the oppressive hold of its handler’s severed limb, began growling with its jaws wide open.

To Dolor’s hope, and much to his surprise, the manahound’s initial target was not him, but the militiaman. The beast turned tand shot a beam of magic fire from its open maw towards its handler, who was now writhing in pain and vainly attempting to reattach his severed arm. The beam hit the officer in the knee, cutting his leg in two and causing him to lose balance and topple over, dropping his severed arm as he desperately tried to keep his balance on one leg. The beast, however, was not done with its tormentor and began approaching the officer, who was lying on the pavement, whimpering, as the pain of his severed arm was now supplanted with the pain of the leg that was simultaneously sliced and cauterized by the manahound’s beam. Dolor panicked when he saw the militiaman’s attempt to pull out the radio to call for reinforcement, only to realize that his only remaining arm was the left one, while the radio was secured in a slot above his right hip. This made it hard for the militiaman to reach across his body to pull out the radio, especially while lying down in unimaginable pain.

This gave the manahound enough time to leap on his former master’s chest and stand atop him, triumphantly asserting its dominance over its former handler, and, without a second thought, the hound bit through the center of its master’s already agony-ridden face, causing him to scream in such a high-pitched and desperate way, that Dolor couldn’t help but feel sympathy for the man, who had now seemingly given up and only wished for death to come faster and liberate him from this unreasonable suffering. The manahound, with its jaws still tightly clenching the militiaman’s bleeding face by the nose, suddenly opened its mouth and blasted a perfectly round hole through its former master’s head, granting his final wish and leaving a trace of burning purple flames on the pavement underneath the hole in militiaman's head. With the old grudge out of the way, the hound immediately turned its attention to Dolor, who was no longer there.