NOVEL WEB Chapter 5 - The Lower Deck
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 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 sat on the floor holding the dagger with his feet while rubbing the rope tying his wrists on the sharp edge of the magic blade. 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 Dolor and his family to fall from grace and be relegated to the life of a below-average manaless citizen of the Republic. 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 youths to “Grandpa Crudele”, as he was often affectionately called in children’s poems and fairytales. 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 he was sitting outside 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.”
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 descent 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, 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 a building, Dolor saw a barely visible staircase. He walked down the stairs until he found himself faced wit 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 Dicks”, 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.
“Get in,” demanded the large orc bouncer
“Glad to see you too, Barco,” said Dolor as he stepped onto the creaky wooden floorboards of the establishment.
“Boss, will not be thrilled to see you Dolor, you better be here to pay off your tab. Did you come to pay off the tab, Dolor? Please tell me you came to pay off your tab,” the orc seemed nervous as he knew what answer he was about to receive.
“No, Barco, I did not come to pay off my tab,” responded Dolor
“Yeah, I fucking thought so. In that case, get your dusty ass out of here before he catches you and starts shaking you down,” stated Barco.
“Hold on, Barco, I need to see him, please!” Dolor pleaded desperately
“Not looking like this, you won’t. Look at the absolute state of you, all dirty and tattered up, and…wait is that…is that fucking blood, Dolor?! You have five seconds to tell me it’s your blood before I call the garbagemen!” The “garbagemen” was the colloquial reference to the militiamen, given to them by the common folk. This reflected not only that most people saw the militiamen as garbage but also that they realized their own place in the Republic, namely that of garbage, which militiamen and the SSB dispose of as they see fit. The orc was now visibly shaking with anxiety at the prospect that Dolor might have just shown up at his workplace covered in blood on the Anniversary Day.
“It is mine…at least some of it,” said Dolor with the demeanor of a child who was just caught eating deserts before lunch.
“You stupid son of a bitch. What do you think you are doing? Are you trying to get us all killed?!” the orc loudly whispered in Dolor’s ear as he grabbed his arm and forced him up the wooden staircase leading to the second floor of the speakeasy.
“It’s all good Barco. Don’t get your panties in a bunch. I just need to talk to Petros about something. I will be out of your hair before you know it,” said Dolor, unsuccessfully feigning carefreeness.
“It doesn’t look or sound ‘all good’ to me, pal. You show up here on the busiest day of the year, when streets are crawling with garbos, and you are covered in blood. Do you think that maybe my reaction is justified?” asked Barco.
“OK, look, I will grant you I am not at my most presentable right now, but I just had a bit of a crazy fucking day, and I have no other place to turn to, please, I need to speak with Petros, he is the only one who can help me with this. You don’t have to worry about yourself. I will tell him I broke in and attacked you to get to him,” proposed Dolor.
“Man, shut the hell up. All that war-related shell shock seems to have affected your brain! Do you really think Petros is going to buy that a manaless human physically overpowered me and get in?”
“Trust me, that question will not arise after he hears what I have to say,” said Dolor
“What the hell do you mean, Patiens? What are you trying to pull here?” the orc began gazing Dolor up and down as if trying to understand what was going on.
“If you are that interested, how about you accompany me into his office? We’ll pretend as if you detained me for my unpaid debt and brought me to him. I will then say that I am here to talk about something else and not to pay my debt. That way, you will just be another victim of my cunning duplicity and thus be spared your manager’s fury,” said Dolor, clearly very pleased with his devilish plan.
“Damn it, Dolor,” the orc exhaled heavily as if resigned to his fate, “you will get yourself killed one day, I swear,” the orc got behind Dolor and they both began walking toward the heavy oak door at the end of the hallway.
“I know, that’s why I am here,” said Dolor
They approached the heavy oak door; Dolor could see ornamental patterns carved into its frame and the door itself. The doorknob was made of polished bronze and shone under the dull chemical hallway lights. Barco was about to reach to knock on the door before Dolor stopped him.
“What now?” asked Barco.
“Before we go in, I wanted to ask you something,” said Dolor.
“What?”
“Did you change the type of business you do since I was last here? Is this no longer a bar?” asked Dolor curiously.
“What are you talking about Dolor, it’s obviously still a bar, as you saw from people drinking and dancing on the first floor,” said Barco
“The sign outside says ‘The Blower of Dicks’, though. Is that a side job you picked up on? I don’t blame you. In this economy, one must abandon his pride and do what’s necessary to support himself to continue the Revolutionary Struggle of the Conclave.” Dolor was barely keeping a straight face as he delivered the line.
Dolor felt a sharp stab of pain in his face as Barco delivered a perfect side hook, knocking Dolor to the floor. “No, we are still called ‘The Lower Deck’, the premier entertainment establishment in the Capital City. Don’t you ever forget that,” Barco helped Dolor off the floor.
“Duly…noted, sir,” said Dolor as he was trying to refocus his vision, blurred by the orc ex-pit fighter’s powerful strike. “If we are going to fool your boss, we better make it believable that there was a struggle between us and you caught me.”
“It is believable, human. Don’t flatter yourself by thinking you let me win. If I wanted to hurt you or catch you, I would, and you wouldn’t be able to stop me,” said Barco as he knocked on the heavy wooden door with his giant fist.
“It’s me, boss, got something for you here,” said the orc loudly.
“Do come in, Barco, my good man!” a cheery, enthusiastic voice responded from the room.
Barco turned the doorknob and opened the door, pushing Dolor in and making him stumble into the center of a study. Dolor saw the familiar big redwood table, which looked like an ancient Elven masterwork, behind which sat a stern-looking middle-aged elf, who looked like he was in his early 100s, who looked at Dolor as if he was an unwelcome distant relative who came to stay over unannounced.
“Ahhh, if it isn’t my good friend, the Lance Corporal! Welcome once again to The Lower Deck, the premier entertainment establishment in the Capital City!” said Petros. “What brings you here on this glorious day of our Republic’s Anniversary celebrations? Have you, perhaps, come here to give us a holiday present and pay off your longstanding debt obligations of 345 mana tickets, which you owe us for almost two months' worth of daily unpaid drinking? But wait, where are my manners? Before you answer that, please Lance Corporal, please take a seat. Would you like some tea?”
“Oh, I would love some tea. Black with 3 sugars, please!” said Dolor as he sat on the chair across from the elf’s work desk.
“Goodness me, three sugars, eh? You certainly like to take advantage of our hospitality. Not that we mind, of course,” said Petros as he began pouring dried tea leaves into a pot and then poured water into it to cover the leaves. The elf put his palms on the sides of the pot as if he was trying to warm his hands on a cold day and channeled a spell which caused the water in the pot to boil and steam coming out of the pot’s nozzle with no fire or smoke. The elf took the pot and poured one full cup of tea into which he put three sugar cubes, which he retrieved from a locked iron box. The elf then stirred the sugar in the cup twice and placed the cup on top of a saucer. He elegantly grabbed the saucer and, without causing as much as a ripple on the cup’s surface, began gracefully approaching Dolor. He approached Dolor from behind, like a server at a luxury resort, and as he leaned over his shoulder to place the cup on the table in front of him, Petros suddenly changed the trajectory of the cup and slammed it into Dolor’s confused face. Sharp ceramic shards and the hot boiling tea liquid combined into one long searing pain which caught Dolor by surprise, causing him to fall off his chair and roll on the floor in agony. He felt the elf’s long leather boot deliver a devastating kick to his liver and kidneys. Dolor threw up from the pain and began gasping for air. All Dolor could hear before he passed out was Petros standing over him.
“Where is my money, you fucker? You are not trying to set me up to get out of your debt, are you?” he asked with his face full of contempt.
“No…I swear…I can... use magic now. Look…” Dolor’s vision blurred as he drifted out of consciousness, the last thing he saw was the orange trace of Amber magic as the dagger flew towards the shocked elf’s face. Petros barely managed to tilt his head to one side causing the flying dagger to narrowly miss his head leaving a burning scrape on his left cheek. He was about to cast a Purple bolt on Dolor’s head to prevent him from using the magicarm again, but luckily for Dolor, he passed out on the floor stained with his vomit, causing the dagger to lifelessly fall from the air onto the wooden floor of the study with a loud clang.