Chapter 599: 599. The Mother Of The Brat That Questioned Me Back Then! An Orc Queen!
Mordecai was in the secondary observation chamber when Rex returned to the upper levels, which was a chamber that had a wide window view of the central plaza and the surrounding commercial district. He was standing at the window with the expression of someone who had stopped trying to process individual events and was observing the overall pattern.
He was not alone. There was Gorvasha Bloodtusk standing beside Mordecai, which conveyed several things to Rex at once.
First, it indicated that the Orc Queen had come from her district in the Underlayer’s northern sector, suggesting she had witnessed enough of the unfolding events to warrant her direct involvement.
Second, her position next to Mordecai rather than in front of Rex implied that she was approaching the situation as a political issue rather than a military one.
For the moment.
Mordecai turned when Rex entered. The expression on his face was not the controlled agitation he had brought to the spire.
It was something quieter and more honest, the expression of someone who had spent the last hour at a window watching the kingdom do what Rex had said it would do and who had arrived at the far end of that hour with a very specific feeling about where he was standing in relation to the person who had been right about all of it.
But more than that, there was a tremor in his hands. Mordecai, the man of logic and structure, looked genuinely, viscerally scared. He looked like a man who had watched a natural disaster take human shape and realized that the disaster had just come home to roost.
"How many?" Mordecai said.
"Engagement count is dropping," Rex said, his voice dripping with a smug, cocky satisfaction.
He didn’t merely enter the room; he commanded the very air around him. He resembled a man who had just savored a particularly exquisite meal, his eyes sparkling with the adrenaline still pulsing from the chaos.
"The resolution phase started approximately fifteen minutes ago."
"How many victims?" Mordecai asked, his voice flat and even, as if he had already accepted that a number existed and simply wanted to know it.
Rex looked at him, a lopsided, arrogant grin tugging at the corner of his mouth.
"I don’t have a final count yet, you fucking idiot," Rex said, his tone casual, as if he were discussing the weather rather than a massacre. "I was a little busy making sure the job was done right."
"Estimate," Mordecai said.
"More than I marked," Rex said, leaning back against a console with a casual, predatory grace. "The secondary conflicts account for approximately forty percent of the total."
"Those were not the purge. Those were the kingdom."
Mordecai turned back to the window. He did not say anything for a moment, and the quality of his silence was the one that preceded people saying things they had been building toward for a long time.
"I authorized this," he said.
"Yes," Rex said, his voice a mocking purr.
"I authorized it without knowing what it would look like," Mordecai said.
"Yes," Rex said. "That’s why you authorized it, you goddamn coward."
"If you had known what it would look like, you would have negotiated every component until what remained was insufficient for the problem."
Mordecai looked at him.
"You knew that," Mordecai said. "You structured the authorization specifically to prevent me from being able to object in advance."
"I structured the authorization to give you the result the kingdom needed," Rex said, his eyes gleaming with the pure, unadulterated pride of a villain who had played his hand perfectly. "In this case, those two statements are equivalent."
"Don’t get your panties in a twist about it."
"That is not a reassuring answer," Mordecai said.
"No," Rex said, his grin widening, showing a flash of teeth. "It isn’t. And it shouldn’t be."
Mordecai held his gaze for a long moment. The silence in the chamber was heavy, suffocating. The Orc Queen watched them both, her eyes wary, sensing the sheer, overwhelming dominance radiating from the man who had just turned a kingdom into a graveyard.
"I’m afraid of you," Mordecai said.
The words carried the weight of a truth that had lingered unspoken for far too long. He wasn’t merely acknowledging a political reality; he was confessing a deep, primal fear that resonated within his very soul.
Rex looked at him.
"That’s appropriate," Rex said, a sharp, condescending grin cutting across his face. He didn’t offer comfort; he offered a victory lap. "Fear is the correct response to a situation you don’t fucking control, Mordecai."
"And you don’t control a goddamn thing here..."
"You haven’t since you made the judgment with your own mouth and gave me the authorization."
Mordecai flinched, a subtle, telltale tightening of his jaw that betrayed the terror he was trying to mask with intellect.
"Are you telling me I made a mistake," he asked, his voice thinner than usual.
"I’m telling you the kingdom needed what it needed," Rex said, his tone dripping with smug arrogance as he paced the room like a predator in a cage. "And you were the authority that could sanction it."
"You made the choice, you dumb shit! Whether it was a mistake depends on what the kingdom looks like in six months." Rex raised his arms. "But don’t pretend you were a victim of my design; you were the architect of your own helplessness!"
"And if it looks wrong," Mordecai said, his eyes searching Rex’s face for a shred of empathy and finding only cold, brilliant malice.
"Then it will be the kingdom that has to deal with that." Rex shrugged, looking incredibly cocky. "Because it will be a kingdom that has been through a fucking meat grinder and come out with the infrastructure to actually respond to what it finds."
"You’re welcome, by the way."
Mordecai looked at him for a moment and then looked back at the window. The way he turned away was the specific, hollow quality of a man who had received a truth so brutal he had to hold it in his hands just to keep from collapsing under the weight of it.
"This has to stop," Gorvasha said, her voice cutting through the tension like a blade.
She didn’t wait for an invitation; she didn’t give Rex the satisfaction of a formal introduction. She was a striking figure, standing nearly two meters tall with broad shoulders that suggested a combat capability both inherent and honed through training.
Her presence reflected the poise of someone who had been in a position of leadership for long enough that authority was not merely a role she played but a part of her very being. Her voice carried the weight of someone accustomed to environments where her words concluded discussions rather than initiated them.
Rex turned to her, his expression shifting from mocking Mordecai to a bored, unimpressed mask. "Ah... you must be the mother of the brat that questioned my achievement back then."
"Look... I’m sorry about what my son said, but this is a different situation!"
"The purge has been running for," he checked, glancing at a readout with a nonchalant air, "seventy-one minutes."
"The active engagement count in the central and northern districts has dropped by sixty percent from its peak."
"It is resolving, Queenie."
"It is not resolving," she spat, her eyes burning with a fury that could melt stone. "It is spreading!"
"I have people in my district who are fighting my guards because your fucking marking appeared on three of my senior household staff."
"I know," Rex said, his grin returning, sharper and more vicious. "Your senior household staff were on the list."
"Surprise, motherfucker."
Gorvasha looked at him with the flat, controlled attention of someone who has received information that makes them want to commit murder but knows that doing so right now would be tactical suicide.
"Those were my people," she said, her voice a low growl.
"They were Legion contacts," Rex corrected her, his voice loud and mocking. "For the past eleven months, they have been providing the Legion with detailed information about your household’s strategic vulnerabilities, your personal protection arrangements, and your district’s defensive infrastructure."
"They weren’t your people; they were our spies."
He stepped closer to her, refusing to be intimidated by her massive frame, leaning into her space with a cocky, disrespectful swagger.
"The Legion," Rex said, his eyes gleaming with the pride of a man who had played a grand game of chess and won, "was building a profile on you specifically."
"You are considered the most capable military leader among the Underlayer’s native population, and eliminating you has been identified as the highest priority target in the northern district."
"Your household staff was going to deliver you on a silver platter," Rex said, a laugh bubbling in his throat. "The timeline I’ve discovered in one of the Legionnaire’s documents suggested it would happen within the next two months."
"You were walking around with a knife at your throat and didn’t even know it."
Gorvasha was very still.
The stillness had a distinct quality. It was not the stillness of someone in shock; rather, it was the stillness of someone who had suspected the truth, was now holding the confirmation, and was contemplating how this revelation would alter their course of action.
"Names," she said.
