03-01-2025, 11:28 PM
Quote:The streets of Kaesama were quiet, orderly, cold. People silently shuffled along the usual routes to their assigned tasks. Legionaries stood on every corner and outside every building, glaring upon the masses with rifles shouldered and bayonets polished. The commoners lowered their eyes as they passed the watchmen, never daring to challenge their icy gaze.
When men worked, they did so without idle chatter or the relaxed movements of the content. They were rigid, nervous, mechanical. There was no longer room for mistakes. A dropped box, a broken tool, a word out of line – all were inadmissible errors, remedied with the guilty man’s sudden disappearance and replacement by somebody more deserving of his role.
Dissent was a forgotten word. Not even the bravest dared to ask unwanted questions or whisper grim secrets to their families in the dead of night. The Commissariat had made it known that anybody, from the lowliest worker to the upper class, was safe from a knock on the door and a five-minute trial ending before a blood-splattered wall.
As Sládek looked down upon his city from the balcony of his palace, his heart was at last tranquil. This incarnation of the fatherland was not a decrepit old man, bloated with decay; it was a single, glorious machine. A firm hand on the levers, a gentle turning of the dial, and it would move as he willed. As the tale of history unfolded according to God’s design, so too did the cogs of Kundrati by the his hand.