The Fool's Gilded Dream (Part II)
The Iron-Spine foothills were a jagged graveyard of gray stone and freezing mist. To the world, Barrett's secret excavation was nothing more than an abandoned quarry, but beneath the surface, it was a hive of frantic, illegal industry.
Zhyelena moved through the tunnels not as a person, but as a flaw in the light. She clung to the jagged ceiling, her body humming with the rhythmic clink-clink-clink of pickaxes echoing from below.
"Faster, you sluggish curs!" Barrett's voice boomed, echoing through the cavern.
Zhyelena looked down. The Lord was no longer the polished aristocrat of the court. His silk doublet was stained with sweat and soot, and his eyes held the glassy sheen of a man who hadn't slept in a week. He was pacing before the gold vein, which now pulsed with an unsettling, rhythmic glow.
The Weight of Ambition
"We've hit a snag, My Lord," a miner called out, wiping blood from his knuckles. "The rock... it's getting harder. We've broken ten diamond-tipped picks in the last hour. It's like the gold is pushing back."
Barrett grabbed the man by his collar, hauling him off the ground. "Then use your teeth if you have to! Do you have any idea what we are standing on? This isn't just ore. It's sovereignty! It's divinity!"
"But the heat, sir..." the miner whimpered. "The deeper we go, the more it burns."
Barrett threw him aside and turned to his lead mage, a scrawny man trembling in tattered robes. "Report. Now."
"My Lord," the mage stammered, consulting a glowing compass. "The mana readings are... nonsensical. This isn't a natural deposit. It's a focal point. It's as if the earth is bleeding concentrated essence. If we rupture the core of the vein, I cannot guarantee the stability of the mountain."
"I didn't hire you for guarantees," Barrett hissed, leaning in close. "I hired you to bypass the Auditor's detection wards. Is the shroud holding?"
"Yes," the mage whispered. "As far as the capital's sensors are concerned, this mountain is a dead zone. A zero."
High above on a limestone ledge, Zhyelena's lips curled into a phantom smirk. A zero, she thought. How little you understand of Leornars's math.
The silence in the High Spire was absolute, broken only by the rhythmic scritch-scratch of Leornars's pen. It was a sound that had unmade kingdoms.
A flicker of shadow preceded her arrival. Zhyelena materialized by the desk, her breathing shallow and raspy, as if the very air of the foothills had tried to reject her presence. Without a word, she reached into her cloak and placed a small, raw nugget on the polished mahogany.
The metal didn't just sit there; it seemed to glow. It was so impossibly soft and pure that it left a bright yellow smudge on the dark wood.
Leornars didn't look up immediately. He finished his sentence, set his pen aside, and finally picked up the nugget. He weighed it in his palm, his eyes narrowing as his "Parallel Thought" skill kicked into overdrive. In a millisecond, he had calculated the displacement, the atomic purity, and the projected market volatility.
"The Iron-Spine foothills," Zhyelena rasped, her voice like grinding stones. "He has three hundred men digging in a fever. They don't eat. They barely breathe. He's already pulled four tons from the earth."
"And his logistics?" Leornars asked, his thumb tracing the gold's surface.
"He's clever, in a desperate sort of way," she replied. "He plans to smuggle the crates through the Silt-Pass. The manifests are already forged. He's labeling the shipments as 'industrial scrap' destined for the Southern foundries."
Leornars let out a short, cold exhale—the closest he ever came to a laugh. "Three hundred million gold marks in raw deposits. Lord Barrett wanted to be a King. He wanted to buy the world."
He set the nugget down with a sharp thud.
"Instead, he has graciously provided the endowment for my National Welfare Act. How philanthropic of him."
The Architecture of Ruin
Leornars stood, his presence filling the room like a gathering storm. He turned to Stacian and Avryl, the latter of whom had been leaning against the wall, sharpening a black-steel dagger.
"The strategy is 'Depreciation and Seizure'," Leornars announced. His voice had shifted. It was no longer the tone of a bureaucrat; it was the voice of a judge delivering a final sentence.
"Avryl," he commanded.
She snapped to attention, the dagger vanishing into her sleeve. "Ready and waiting, My Lord."
"Take a full wing of the Black Phoenix guards. I want a total quarantine on the Iron-Spine district. Block every carriage route, every goat path, and every mountain stream within a fifty-mile radius of that cave. Nothing moves. Not a crate of 'scrap,' not a letter, not a single pebble. If a bird flies out of that zone, I want it plucked."
"Consider it done," Avryl said, a feral grin spreading across her face. "And the miners?"
"Detain them only if they resist. Our target is the cargo."
Stacian cleared his throat, adjusting his spectacles. "A physical blockade is one thing, My Lord, but Barrett is wealthy enough to hire mercenaries to break a hole in our line. If he manages to get even a fraction of that gold to the black market, he could fund a rebellion."
"He won't," Leornars said, clicking his silver pen. "Because by tomorrow morning, that gold will be worth less than the dirt it's buried in."
The Death of Value
Stacian blinked. "I beg your pardon?"
"Issue an emergency financial decree," Leornars said, his fingers dancing across a holographic interface. "Effective immediately, we are flooding the local exchanges with 'Alchemical Gold'—low-grade illusions and synthetic alloys. We will announce that a massive vein of 'Fool's Gold' has contaminated the national reserve."
He looked at Stacian with a gaze that could freeze blood.
"In the Iron-Spine district specifically, the value of gold is to be officially downgraded. It is now worth less than copper due to 'extreme over-saturation and suspected mass-counterfeiting.' It is no longer currency. It is contraband."
Avryl let out a sharp bark of laughter. "So, if he tries to pay someone with it..."
"He will be arrested for 'Possession of Contraband and Economic Sabotage'," Leornars finished. "We let him dig. We let him exhaust his remaining secret funds paying those three hundred men. We let him sweat and bleed for every ounce of that 'sunlight.'"
He turned back to the window, looking out over the sprawling city he controlled down to the last copper piece.
"And when he finally emerges from that hole, dragging his 'fortune' behind him to buy his way to freedom, he will find he is holding nothing but very heavy, very illegal stones. He won't be a King, Stacian. He'll be a common smuggler with a broken back."
Avryl sheathed her blade with a satisfying shink. "We're making his greatest treasure his death warrant. I love it when you're in a creative mood, My Lord."
"Logic is the only true art, Avryl," Leornars replied, picking up his pen once more. "Now, go. I have a budget to balance."