By the time the Mage Protectorate fell, there were three women who were
largely responsible for saving the human race on Durus. Hogarth Pudeyonavic
sent the Springfielders through the Deathfall portal in the first place;
this much was common knowledge. It wasn’t until later that people learned
that, had she not expedited the process with her machine, the portal still
would have pulled them through, but it would have chewed them up, rather
than swallowing them whole. She was also instrumental in protecting the town
following the thankful disappearance of its first leader, Smith.
Councilwoman Hardt was a true leader, and continued to protect the people,
even after all the terrible things they put her through. Jayde Kovac was a
young girl with immense powers, who ended the war with the time monsters,
and rescued the entire current population of Durus in 2092 when all of the
oxygen disappeared for thirty seconds. Other women were involved in helping
make sure humanity survived, including Hilde Unger, but these three were the
most famous. Well, not everyone saw it this way. Councilwoman Hardt was a
carryover from the old world, she always went against Smith’s decisions, and
she didn’t let men push her around. Some didn’t appreciate that. Though the
truth about Hogarth’s actions eventually came to light, she would always be
associated with the Deathfall, and would always be blamed for it. It didn’t
matter what good she did, people could only remember the bad, because that
was what certain voices screamed about all the time. Jayde was in the same
boat, because winning the war came at a great cost. Experts could try to
explain that things would have been much worse for them had they
lost that war, but again, it didn’t matter. In The Republic, none of
this would matter, because reason didn’t matter, because truth didn’t
matter, because women didn’t matter. Kovac, Hardt, and Pudeyonavic were
later collectively called The Witches of Durus, and they were destined to be
joined by a fourth historical figure. They didn’t know who this fourth woman
would turn out to be, but they were told she would one day spell the
downfall of the Republic—which was true. They used people’s fear of this in
order to justify their decision to forge the Republic in the first place.
The Witches, along with other women, had done—or will do—so much to hurt the
world that a small group of men decided they could no longer be trusted with
authority, or responsibility. They had to be controlled—nay, managed.
It wasn’t that they didn’t have the right to be safe, happy, and free, but
they needed to be told what to do, and they weren’t allowed to tell anyone
else what to do. Even a mother could not be left alone with a child, for she
may instill them with values such as equality, social harmony, or good
trouble. Like, literally. If the man needed to leave the house, the children
had to go with him, or the mother did, but she could not supervise without
being supervised herself at the same time. Some husbands didn’t let their
wives out of earshot, even if they didn’t have children, but that kind of
thing didn’t happen until later. For now, the new system was just beginning.
It started as a vision amongst a very select few, but they whispered their
warped ideas to anyone who got too close to them, like a viral load to an
unmasked person less than two meters away. It would have stopped here, but
the republicans, as they liked to be called, had something major on
their side. They were in charge of Watershed, and its dam. They controlled
the water, and the moderate amounts of electricity that Aljabara had, and
that was enough to give them the influence they needed to pretty much just
dictate whatever they wanted. Their ideas would evolve over time, just like
it did for any governmental body, but the basic tenets were clear: women
can’t be trusted, and...well, I guess that’s mostly it. Under the new laws,
you could do anything you wanted, save killing, stealing, being antisocially
dishonest, or having a vagina. This was the way things were in The Republic,
and they didn’t change for over sixty-five years.
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