Chapter 45: Bureaucracy of Starvation

  I stood with my hand pressed against the cold, black marble of the Obelisk.

  To Kensho (12), it was a schematic. To the naked eye, just a monolith.

  I traced the golden circuitry running down the side of the machine and into the earth. It looked like a root system, or maybe a set of intake pipes.

  "The valves are wide open," I murmured, sensing the pull. "It's trying to drink. 100% suction. But nothing is coming up from the ground."

  I looked down. My vision pierced the topsoil, following the metaphysical roots of the machine. I expected to see... something. A river of light? A battery?

  I saw dust. The earth beneath the machine was spiritually barren. It looked like a dry riverbed.

  "connection is dead," I said, pulling my hand back. "There is no signal. No flow."

  Elder Oren stood beside me, leaning on his staff. He didn't look surprised. He looked defeated.

  "Three months," he rasped. "The 'Deep-Spring' shifted. A tremor in the world-crust diverted the current five miles east. We petitioned the Spire. We sent runners. We begged for a reassessment of the quota."

  "And?"

  "And they sent a receipt," Oren said bitterly. "The quota is fixed. The Spire does not care where the mana comes from. Only that the batteries are full."

  I frowned. "Deep-Spring?" I asked, testing the word. "You mean the energy source isn't everywhere? It flows like water?"

  "It flows like blood," Oren corrected. "And the vein moved."

  I looked at the machine again. If the "vein" in the ground was dry, where was the energy coming from? The Obelisk was humming. It was full of something.

  My Kensho shifted focus. I looked at the ambient air.

  The machine had changed its intake mode. Since it couldn't pull from the deep earth, it had widened its net. It was pulling the ambient life force out of the air. Out of the wilting crystal-stalks.

  And out of the people.

  "Show me your arm," I said to Oren, my voice flat.

  The old man hesitated. He looked at Vrex, who was standing like a sentinel at the edge of the field, watching the forest. Then, slowly, Oren rolled up his threadbare sleeve.

  I hissed through my teeth.

  His arm was thin. His skin fading.

  The skin was translucent, like parchment held up to a candle. I could see the bones beneath, but even they looked misty, insubstantial. It was Ontological Atrophy. The machine was sucking the "reality" right out of him to fill its tank.

  "I have given what I can," Oren whispered, rolling the sleeve back down. "I am old. My flame is dim. But the machine... it hungers for brighter fuel."

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  He turned his gaze toward the village square, where the little girl; the one Vrex had saved from the collapsing roof, was sitting in the dust, playing with a doll made of dried stalks.

  "My granddaughter," Oren said, his voice cracking. "Elara. She has the Spark. In the Spire, she would be a prodigy. Here? She is... high-yield."

  I felt a wave of nausea that had nothing to do with the humidity.

  "She burns bright," Oren wept, a single tear cutting through the dust on his cheek. "She could fill the quota alone. But it will leave her a husk. She will be like me. Half a ghost before she is ten years old."

  I looked at the machine. I looked at the sleek, gold-veined marble that probably cost more than this entire village.

  "This is not a tax," I spat, the taste of bile in my mouth. "It's a harvest. They are farming you. They aren't governing you."

  Vrex turned.

  He had been silent, listening. But at the mention of the girl, at the sight of the old man's fading arm, the gargoyle moved.

  He didn't say a word. He walked past us, his heavy stone feet shaking the ground. He walked straight to the nearest crumbling cottage, a structure with a wall that had bowed out, shedding its mortar.

  SLAM.

  Vrex drove his fist into the earth next to the wall. He grabbed a massive, fallen foundation stone. He hoisted it, easily two hundred pounds of rock, and slammed it into the gap in the wall.

  He reached into his Locus. He pulled out a handful of the Kiln-Heart Slag we’d bought in the Deep Reach. He crushed the super-dense rock in his hand, turning it into a coarse powder, then mixed it with the mud at his feet to create a makeshift, high-density mortar.

  He began to rebuild the wall.

  His movements were violent, angry.

  "Vrex?" I called out.

  "The system is predatory," Vrex roared, not stopping his work. He slammed another stone into place. "I cannot punch the Spire. I cannot smash the economy."

  He turned to me, his golden eyes blazing with a fury I’d never seen.

  "But I can fix the wall," he growled. "I can make the shelter stand. Stone endures, Kaelen. Flesh should not be mortar. A child should not be fuel."

  He turned back to the cottage, working with a frantic, terrifying speed.

  "I will make it strong," he muttered to himself. "If the shield fails, the wall must hold. I will make it hold."

  I watched him. My partner, the tank, the mercenary who claimed he only cared about efficiency, was frantically renovating a stranger's house because he couldn't handle the moral weight of the situation.

  I looked back at the Obelisk.

  The Spire expected a shipment. They expected the villagers to bleed themselves dry to keep the lights on in the capital.

  I checked my Lumen (11/11).

  I reached into my pouch and touched the Lucent Shards.

  I could fill it. I could dump my own energy, burn my batteries, and fill the quota. It would save the girl. It would save Oren.

  For a month.

  And then the machine would be empty again. And I would be gone.

  "Charity doesn't work," I whispered. "Charity is just feeding the beast so it eats the victim later."

  I walked over to the Obelisk. I didn't touch it with my hand. I touched it with Kensho.

  I looked at the mechanism. It was just plumbing. Magic plumbing, sure, but the logic was the same. Input. Storage. Output. The input pipe was dry because the source had moved.

  "If this 'Deep-Spring' moved," I said, my mind racing, "then we do not need to fill the bucket with blood."

  I looked East, toward the dark treeline of the Wilds, where Oren said the "current" had shifted.

  I walked over to Vrex. He was smoothing the mortar with his thumb, his anger settling into a cold, hard resolve.

  "Big guy," I said. "Stop building. We are going for a walk."

  Vrex looked at me. "The wall is not finished."

  "The wall is fine," I said. "But if we don't fix the pipe, no amount of stone will save them."

  I pointed toward the forest.

  "Oren says the energy moved. It's out there. In the monster territory."

  Vrex wiped the mud from his hands. "You wish to find a rogue magical current? We are not geomancers, Kaelen. We cannot move a river."

  I patted my sash, where the Abyssal Weaver’s Cord and the Void-Knife sat. I thought about the concepts I’d learned in the tunnel. Force. Flow. Guide.

  "I know nothing about geomancy" I grinned, though there was no humor in it. "But I know about rerouting power. If the cable is unplugged, You find the plug, you don't build a generator out of people."

  I turned to the Elder.

  "Oren," I said. "Keep your people inside. We're going to go find your missing spring. And if we find it... we're going to drag it back here."