Calculus of Greed

"To steal gold is a crime. To steal a god is a statistic." —Sanguine Ledger, Recovered Fragment

Faren - The Glimmerdeep Archives

The plan, Faren decided as he crawled through a ventilation duct that smelled of ozone and ancient dust, was insane.

"One-way trip," Bolla had called the Ore-Chute. Aga, Zalim, and Gaidan had taken the sled down into the darkness, a suicide run to distract the Sanguine in the mines. That left Faren and Elara to perform the "heist."

"Clear," Elara whispered from ahead. She kicked out a grate, and they dropped into a hallway of polished obsidian.

Faren scrambled to his feet, dusting off his robes. He adjusted his spectacles, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird. "Are we... are we sure this is the Archives?"

"According to the city schematics, yes," Elara said, checking her wrist gauge. "Though the energy signature is... dense."

They weren't in a library. There were no shelves, no scrolls, no comforting smell of paper.

The Glimmerdeep Archive was a machine.

The room was a vast, cylindrical silo stretching up into the darkness. Instead of books, the walls were lined with millions of brass punch-cards and stone tablets slotted into pneumatic tubes. In the center of the room, a massive, multi-armed automaton—the Librarian—hung from a ceiling rail, spinning silently as it sorted the data.

"It’s a memory core," Elara breathed, her scientific curiosity momentarily overriding the danger. "A mechanical brain. It records every transaction, every ounce of ore, every birth and death in the kingdom."

"It's quiet," Faren noted. The silence was heavy, oppressive. "Too quiet for a machine this size."

"The Sanguine," Elara said, pointing to the control dais in the center of the room. "Look."

Three figures in crimson robes stood around the main interface console. They weren't reading; they were writing. They were feeding new punch-cards into the system, overriding the old data.

"They're rewriting history," Faren realized, a cold knot forming in his stomach. "They're erasing the King's decrees. Validating their presence retroactively."

"We need the blueprints," Elara hissed, pulling him behind a pillar. "Bolla said the schematics for the 'Heart Project' would be classified as Royal Engineering. Sector 4."

"That's on the other side," Faren whispered, peering around the stone. "Past the red robes."

"I can disable the Librarian," Elara said, tapping her cannon. "One EMP burst. But it will alert the Sanguine."

"No," Faren said firmly. The word surprised him as it rushed past his teeth. He was the coward. The one who hid. But looking at those red robes—the same robes that had destroyed his home, his family—something in him hardened. It wasn't bravery; it was a cold, sharp anger. "We don't need to disable it. We need to ask it."

"Ask it?"

"It's a bureaucratic system, Elara. It runs on logic. Laws. If the Sanguine are inputting false data, the system must be rejecting it somewhere. A logic error. A glitch." Faren pointed to a small, unattended service terminal near the wall. "Get me to that console."

Elara looked at him, then nodded. "Move on my signal."

She unhooked a small, humming capacitor from her belt and rolled it across the floor. It clattered loudly against a brass pipe.

The Sanguine heads snapped up. The Librarian automaton whirred, its optical sensors focusing on the noise.

"Now," Elara whispered.

They sprinted. Faren moved low and fast, sliding into the alcove of the service terminal. Elara took up a defensive position, her cannon aimed at the Sanguine, though she didn't fire. She held the silence.

Faren’s hands flew over the brass keys. The interface was archaic—Old Dwarven script, a dialect of hard angles and guttural syntax. Most scholars found it impenetrable. Faren found it beautiful.

Query: Project Heart. Clearance: Royal.

The screen flashed red. ACCESS DENIED. SANGUINE OVERRIDE ACTIVE.

"They've locked it," Faren muttered, sweat stinging his eyes. "Bio-coded."

"Faren," Elara warned. The Sanguine were moving. They had realized the noise was a diversion.

"I need a minute!"

"You have ten seconds."

Faren stared at the keys. He couldn't hack the code. He wasn't a thief. He was a scholar. He had to think like the machine.

The Sanguine were rewriting history. But they couldn't rewrite foundation.

Query: Structural Integrity. Load-Bearing Analysis. Deepest Dark.

If they were digging a hole to the center of the world, the machine would have to account for the structural stress. It was a safety protocol.

The screen flickered. WARNING. GEOLOGICAL INSTABILITY DETECTED. SECTOR ZERO.

"Got you," Faren whispered. He bypassed the security encryption by accessing the maintenance logs.

The blueprints flooded the screen.

Faren’s blood ran cold.

He wasn't looking at a mine. He was looking at a slaughterhouse.

The schematic showed the Sleeping King, a massive geo-form curled in the roots of the mountain. But bolted into his stone flesh were thousands of injectors.

"Elara," Faren croaked. "It's not a wake-up call."

He ripped the punch-card containing the schematic from the slot.

"It's a juicer."

"Intruders!" a voice hissed.

Faren spun. A Sanguine scribe stood ten feet away, his hand raised. A lash of red energy materialized in the air, crackling with malice.

Faren didn't have a weapon. He had a punch-card.

But Elara did.

THOOM.

The Etheric blast caught the Sanguine in the chest, throwing him back into the main console. Sparks showered down as the interface exploded.

"Run!" Elara shouted.

The alarm finally blared—a deep, mournful horn that shook the dust from the ceiling. The Librarian automaton screeched, its programming corrupted by the damage to the console. Its massive mechanical arms began to flail, smashing shelves and stone.

Faren scrambled after Elara, clutching the punch-card to his chest. They dodged falling debris, sprinting for the exit.

They burst out onto the gantry, the cool air of the chimney shaft hitting them.

"Did you get it?" Elara gasped, checking her weapon's heat gauge.

Faren held up the brass card. "Root isn't trying to control the Stone King," he said, his voice trembling with the magnitude of the horror. "He's trying to drink him. He's building a siphon to drain the dead god's power into something, himself, I would hypothesize."

Elara stared at the card. "If he does that... he won't just be a blood mage. He'll be on par with the Arcana themselves."

"We have to warn Aga," Faren said, looking down into the smoky abyss of the city. "They're walking into a trap. Root wants them down there. He needs a spark to start the engine."

A deep, rhythmic thudding began to echo from the mines below. It wasn't the machinery. It was a heartbeat.

"We're too late," Elara whispered. "The engine is already starting."