Heartstone

Blue Collar Slavery

Arwin fled from the bluebloods as fast as he could, heart racing from the danger and the pace, vaulting roots and gullies, swerving between trunks, and trying to find the most difficult terrain that might slow down the horses hot on his tail.

A thunderous crack sounded from above.

Arwin looked up into the pale, clear-blue sky. Something tumbled towards him. It seemed to grow larger as it fell. At the last moment, he threw himself to the side. Looking at the ground next to him, he blinked. Huh? A bolt of cloth?

Another sharp crack resounded through the forest. Arwin looked back and saw the nobles gesturing towards the sky. He looked up, and more specks appeared out of the blue. They fell towards him.

He threw his arms over his head for protection and continued to run as bolts of cloth, all kinds of steel bolts, and even bolts of lightning slammed down into the forest floor around him. Bolts from the blue! The way the men had cast their hands towards the sky, Arwin was sure they were some kind of magic users. He was being attacked with spells! That was much less exciting in person than when it happened to other people in books.

Steel bolts painfully ricocheted off Arwin's shoulders and back. A bolt of cloth caught the side of his head, stunning him. He slowed and stumbled around the forest floor. A bolt of lightning just missed him, splitting a nearby blue spruce instead. The tree moaned with despair as it fell into two pieces, one of which caught Arwin and knocked him to the ground, trapping him.

Arwin clutched his aching head and looked up at the three horsemen reining in above him.

"Let's gut him!" the monocled man enthused with vicious glee. He was obese, with a fleshy face and small, pig-like eyes.

"No. I shall grind him into paste and turn him into fertilizer for my flowers," growled Azamont.

"Gentlemen, gentlemen. Control your savage urges," the third man said with icy calm. He was tall and reedy thin, a calculating look in his eyes. "Waste not, want not, as they say? He's a fine, strapping lad. Look at the muscle on him. Why kill him when we can put him to work as one of our slaves? The livestock always needs replenishing."

Monocle nodded reluctantly, double chin bobbing, looking like he'd prefer to see blood spilled. "Ah, make a blue-collar worker out of him. I like it. Though it means the chase does lack a satisfyingly bloody ending."

Azamont snarled with resignation, evidently seeing the other man's good sense, although not happy about it. "Very well. Always the voice of reason, Tremblée. I suppose we should be grateful."

Tremblée reached a spindly arm into a saddlebag and pulled out a blue metal ring. He dismounted and snicked it closed around Arwin's neck. It was a collar, much like a dog might wear.

Arwin heard the lock click shut, and an immediate change came over him. This was worse than the blue field had been. Now, he wasn't just melancholy; he felt downright beaten. He felt lower class. He felt hopeless. When they hauled him to his feet, his shoulders sagged, and his back stooped. His only method of walking seemed to be the trudge: the slow, weary, depressing walk of a man who has nothing left in life and who moves only at the behest of his betters. He'd been transformed into a blue-collar worker, and their slave.

They herded him through the evergreen (everblue-and-green?) forest until they came to a large, open area that looked like a dirty scar carved into the natural landscape. Other men in blue collars chopped down pines and spruce and hammered rocks to smithereens. Insufferably smug-looking men in suits with white collars stood above the blue-collared workers, the whites armed with whips and lethal-looking calculators. They moved and spoke in a way that proclaimed their superiority to the world. Although, when then they saw their blueblood masters, they transformed into weaselling brown-nosers.