There wasn’t much noise in the room.
Rex stood there, looking at Pavellia with the sa expression he wore when soone had just revealed information that altered the course of events. He was contemplating what this ant for the entire operation.
"She has her good looks, but it seems like her brain... needs a little work."
He said, "You have the full six-week movent record."
"Yes," she said.
Rex asked, "Why are you telling this now instead of six weeks ago to that fucking bum?"
Pavellia’s expression shifted slightly. "Six weeks ago, I wasn’t sure if the information would be utilized or discarded."
’What the fuck...?’ Behind the mask, Rex’s expression suggested he was nearing the end of his patience with all the bullshit they fed him.
The way she articulated her thoughts didn’t necessarily imply she was accusing him, but it also left room for doubt. Her delivery carried the flat precision of soone who had made a judgnt based on observations and was unwilling to reconsider.
Mordecai looked at his hands.
Rex stared at Mordecai.
Rex said, "She inford you eight months ago, and the council eting she attended was an administrative review that concluded it was a case of rock movent."
Mordecai nodded but didn’t look up. He could feel the weight of the information settling heavily on his shoulders.
"And the person monitoring the only border-adjacent recording system for the area in question had been doing it for three years out of her own concern for her people," Rex said, "because the council’s standard monitoring posture wasn’t configured to catch what she was catching."
Mordecai nodded once more, though this ti his face betrayed a clear expression of fear.
Rex was worn out in a way that transcended both physical and ntal fatigue. It was an exhaustion that arose when a pattern of carelessness revealed itself to be deeper and more systemic than the individual mistakes it had generated.
He stepped back. ’I could die hearing all of this bullshit even further now...’
’But...’ Rex looked at Pavellia. ’This fucking bitch... at least she can provide with sothing at least logical...’
"Pavellia," he said.
"Yes," she said.
"Tell more..." he said. "This ti, I want everything you have to tell!"
She went on.
She talked about how the second-stratum entities in the northern shaft moved over six weeks with the thodical accuracy of soone who had been writing it down as it happened. Four people working together in silence, moving through the shaft’s internal passage at tis that made it less likely that they would be seen.
They weren’t in a hurry. They had been doing reconnaissance at a speed that showed they were sure of their own tiline.
"Their working signatures," Pavellia said, "are consistent with what would be produced by a system type that predates the current divine taxonomy."
"This system is not divinely corrupt, not demon-native, and does not fit into any recognized reincarnator category."
"In fact... the frequency band is sohow... older."
Rex said, "Primordial class."
"That matches the historical records I have access to," she said. "The second stratum’s civilization predates the demon kingdoms by several thousand years."
"Their system types were in use before the current gods established the divine frawork."
"What we’re seeing is the functional output of systems that were never integrated into the current taxonomy because they existed before the taxonomy was created."
Rex looked at the tablet she was holding that had the papers on it.
"The Key to the Underlayer." He said, "Why do they want it?"
Pavellia was quiet for a mont, which ant she had an answer and was deciding how to say it instead of whether to give it.
"The Key doesn’t just open the Underlayer’s main entrance." She said, "The historical records in my clan’s archive call it a boundary anchor."
"It’s one of several things that keep the Underlayer and the stratum above it from moving around."
"So..." Rex said, "...if it’s taken away."
"The boundary would lose stability," she explained. "Not imdiately or in a catastrophic way."
"The decline would happen slowly, over the course of months or even years. But the direction would always be the sa."
Rex said, "The surface would notice it."
"Eventually," she said. "The Apostle network would record the change in dinsional resonance."
"The Academy’s monitoring systems would flag it. The question of what was in the Underlayer would beco an active surface-level political priority rather than a theoretical one."
Rex stared at her.
"They want the surface to find the Underlayer," he said. "That’s the window for contact that soone talked about...?"
Pavellia nodded once.
"The second-stratum civilization has been waiting for the right conditions to make contact with the surface." She said, "They want it to happen on their terms, not through a crisis."
"Taking away the Key would make it so that surface-level beings would have to deal with the Underlayer’s existence as a practical matter instead of a theoretical one."
"It would force the conversation without requiring the second stratum to introduce themselves directly."
"Using Mordecai’s Underlayer as the go-between," Rex said, "whether that fucking bum wanted it or not."
Pavellia didn’t say anything, which was proof in itself.
Rex stared at Mordecai.
Mordecai had been quiet since Pavellia started talking, and the quality of his quietness was that of soone whose understanding of a situation was changing in a way that made them uncomfortable.
Rex said, "You had no fucking idea, huh?"
"No," said Mordecai.
"Eight months ago, your council got a briefing that you didn’t act on," Rex said. "There’s a six-week infiltration operation going on in your northern shaft that you found out about a week ago and didn’t tell anyone about."
"There’s an independent intelligence network that connects to your monitoring infrastructure that you didn’t know about."
"And a second-stratum civilization has been running a decades-long contact strategy that involves your kingdom as a structural elent without your knowledge or consent."
Mordecai appeared to be a person who was experiencing their own situation firsthand, realizing that being in it was far more uncomfortable than observing it from the outside.
Rex turned away from him once more.
"Who’s the one that’s responsible for all of this? Just spill it now because I don’t want to hear any of that bullshit anymore..." Rex asked the question, but it seed as if he was not addressing anyone in particular.
The noise level in the hall dropped in the sa way it does when many people are waiting for a specific question and then hear it.
Mordecai cleared his throat. "That would be Gelion."
"Bring him here," Rex said.
"Cassandra is already—"
"Shut the fuck up!" Rex said while pointing at him, and then Mordecai nodded. "Next ti... one more mistake and we shuffle everything, including your summons and councils."
"And... make sure to summon so higher intelligence beings."
Mordecai raised an eyebrow, intrigued by the suggestion. "You really think that would help us get out of this ss?"
He walked over to the chair that the guard demons had put there earlier and that he had turned down when it was offered. Then he sat down without any fuss.
"It’s to fill in your fucking dumb mind."
Mordecai thought for a mont about what it would an to call on beings with higher intelligence. Maybe, in the midst of all the chaos, a new point of view could really help them find a way out of their problems.
Rex crossed his legs and stared at the doors of the hall, growing impatient as he waited. The mood in the room got tense, and Rex’s anger grew with each passing second.
Mordecai could tell that Rex was slowly losing his patience because he knew that ti was running out and that they needed to make a choice soon.
A minute passed.
One of the demon guards approached him, offering snacks. "Would you like so freshly baked smashed spider while you wait?"
Rex closed his eyes, and the baked smashed spider floated toward him with his telekinesis before crashing into his face, sending his entire body flying backward.
Mordecai began to panic even more while Pavillia waved a fan in his direction, trying to cool him down.
Then another minute has passed.
Rex’s gaze moved to Mordecai.
"This is wasting my fucking ti!" Rex asked, "How long does it take to get one person out of this kingdom?!"
Rex scread. "EVEN YOUR FUCKING DEMON QUEEN IS A FUCKING FRAUD!!!"
"Now, now, calm down... Cassandra is fast," Mordecai said. "She’s already—"
"I’m going to count to three," Rex said.
His voice remained steady, but the elents in the room responded to it—a low vibration rippled beneath the floor, and a pressure change in the air caused the nearest guard demons to brace themselves instinctively. "If I don’t see him walking through those doors by the ti I count to three..."
"...I’ll find the first structurally significant wall in this hall and reduce it to components."
A faint crack ford in the stone floor between Rex’s feet, not as a result of any deliberate action on his part, but rather from the passive output of the Elental Mastery responding to his current state.
Mordecai imdiately stepped behind Pavellia, grabbing the edges of her shoulders like a man who had found a structural support and intended to use it.
"Cassandra is very fast," Pavellia said quietly, as if clarifying. "You’ll have to wait—"
"One," Rex said.
A voice ca from sowhere in the hall’s secondary seating. It was young, and it had that special quality of youth that was there before experience had fully set it straight.
"Excuse ."
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