Rex didn’t turn right away when soone called him.
The voice went on, "I have a question."
Rex turned around.
The speaker was a young Orc, compact in the way Orc youth were before they grew into the full forward-leaning mass of their species. His expression had the combination of genuine conviction and insufficient information that sotis produced exactly this variety of mont.
"I understand that what you’re asking about is important," the young Orc said, straightening under Rex’s attention without stepping back from it, which was either courage or the specific confidence of soone who hadn’t yet correctly estimated the room.
"But you’ve been standing in this hall for the last hour speaking to Lord Mordecai as if you have authority here, while I have been sitting here the entire ti without hearing you explain what you have actually done for the Underlayer that earns you the right to speak to him in that manner."
The hall fell into a silence that often follows when soone utters words that the rest of the room has tacitly agreed to avoid. The tension in the room was thick, and anxious glances darted between the young orc and Rex, whose expression remained unreadable.
"W-why is that kid here...?!’
’Why did he just say that?!’
’We’re fucked...!’
’Yeah, I quit...’
Mordecai was nearly shocked to death by what he had just said. "W-what are you—"
Rex stood from the chair.
He walked slowly toward the young Orc, and as he did, the telekinesis grew stronger, lifting the young Orc from his seat with such precision that there was no doubt about who was in charge. The Orc stood up smoothly, his feet leaving the ground until he was at Rex’s eye level, held there by a grip that was strong but not painful.
"N-no, stop! He’s just..." Just as Mordecai wanted to stop Rex, he fell to his throne because of his telekinesis.
Rex stared at him.
The young Orc, to his credit, looked back.
"You want to know what I’ve done for the Underlayer," Rex said, and his voice had the quality it had when he was not modulating it at all, just saying the words in the order they needed to co.
Rex’s free hand rose slightly, and the elents in the hall’s ambient space began to move. The elents moved in an organized manner, not chaotically, as they do when soone is holding multiple active workings simultaneously.
The stone beneath the floor shifted audibly. The air pressure in the room changed direction.
The luminescent fungi on the ceiling flickered as the energy in the room redistributed around Rex’s position like water flowing around a stone.
"For about weeks ago... the capital of Aethelgard was attacked by the undead in a coordinated way, according to surface records." Rex said, "Twenty-three reincarnators were confird dead, and three Apostle-level operatives were taken off active duty."
"There were enough civilian deaths to call a full Apostle Network ergency session."
The young Orc didn’t move at all.
"That assault ca from , who uses another identity," Rex said. "Every undead unit, every attack vector, every calculated target was designed to produce one specific outco, which was that the Apostle Network’s operational priority would shift from identifying the Underlayer’s access points to responding to an active threat they could not imdiately categorize."
He kept the young Orc at eye level.
"Do you know what bought the Underlayer?" Rex said. "It bought the delay before the Academy starts its coordinated push into the canyon network!"
"It bought the window before the Key to the Underlayer beca an active acquisition priority on the surface."
"It bought the ti that fucking moron’s kingdom needed to not be under direct assault right now, today, by organized Apostle forces with a clear operational mandate."
There was no sound in the hall.
"I paid for that outco with my own body," Rex said. "The apostle I engaged has a full-ceiling activation that has not been deployed for years!"
"I let him use it. Not because I had no other option but because the intelligence value of demonstrating his capability ceiling to him was worth the cost."
The young Orc’s expression had been moving through its adjustnt cycle since Rex started talking.
"No one in this hall saw that happen," Rex said. "No one in this hall will ever be able to verify it publicly!"
"I received nothing visible from it, no title, no acknowledgnt, no audience. It was done because it needed to be done, and the Underlayer was safer because it was done."
He looked into the eyes of the young Orc for one more second.
"Now... you’re going to be a good fucking boy and sit the FUCK back down," Rex said. "And you’re going to sit in it until soone older than you has spoken three tis!"
"That’s not a punishnt... it’s how you learn when to ask a question and when to hold it."
He put the young Orc down.
There were footsteps coming from the main entrance of the hall, and a huge orc was moving down the hallway at a fast but not running pace. He had the body of a fighter, and the look on his face when he saw the young orc in the secondary seating changed quickly and went through a number of stages.
He crossed the hall and knelt down in front of Rex in one smooth motion, like soone who had done this before and knew exactly what it ant.
"The Gorvasha clan’s king extends its apology...!!!" the older Orc shouted, his voice carrying the weight of soone who had processed the full context of the situation faster than most people processed a single sentence. "My son speaks from fire and from youth, and those are things I should have directed better before bringing him to this hall."
He didn’t look up.
"His mother is the Gorvasha queen, and her fire runs in him stronger than his patience." The Orc king said, "I take responsibility for that in front of you."
Rex looked at the kneeling Orc king and then at the young Orc standing a few feet away. The look on his face was like that of soone who had just seen their parent kneel down for a mistake, which was its own kind of lesson.
Rex touched the Orc king’s shoulder for a mont. "No need to apologize."
"He asked a fair question." Rex said, "And the answer was worth giving."
He used telekinesis to pull the young Orc toward the Orc king. He did this in a calm, efficient way, like moving sothing to where it belonged.
The young Orc landed next to his father, and for a brief mont, they both touched the floor in a manner reminiscent of the encounter between sothing immovable and sothing reluctant.
"However, I do want to et this Orc queen soon... to congratulate her for giving birth to this young, brave child." After that, Rex turned to face the doors when he heard footsteps approaching.
Cassandra was there.
And there was soone next to her.
Mordecai then introduced him with a low tone. "I want you to et Gelion Amorphis."
"He’s a reincarnator like us."
After that, he starts to give so useful information for Rex, where he then has a model for what Gelion would look like based on the information Mordecai gave, which was that Gelion was a sli that had evolved to human form through a leveling system.
He had updated that model on the way to Castle Nocturna to account for the likelihood that a sli of that developntal history would present in human form with the technical completeness of an entity that had made the form a deliberate choice.
The update was correct, but not enough.
Gelion appeared entirely human, yet there was sothing about this human appearance that seed slightly unnatural. Not in any one part, but as a whole, a perfect copy of a real thing was always different from the real thing at so level of inspection.
The movent was a clear indicator. The biological system that enabled human bodies to move had been shaped over millions of years of evolution.
Gelion’s body moved because Gelion willed it to, and this choice was entirely appropriate in every aspect. However, it felt slightly peculiar, as often happens with perfect decisions.
Rex stood in the middle of the hall with his arms crossed and stared at Gelion.
Gelion looked back at him without flinching, which is what most people do when Rex looks at them with that kind of attention.
"Explain yourself," Rex said.
Gelion’s head tilted at approximately three degrees. "Could you specify what you want explained?"
"Everything," Rex said. "Start with the intelligence network you’ve been running inside Mordecai’s monitoring infrastructure."
"End with the second-stratum contact strategy you’ve been coordinating without telling anyone in this hall."
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