Chapter 395: 395. We Have A New Faction Now, The Legion of Anti-Reincarnators, They Said

"You finally made it," the lead figure said.

He was a tall, broad-shouldered man of forty, with short iron-grey hair and the weathered, settled face of one who was exactly as calm as he looked. His voice was calm, unhurried.

"We were beginning to think the corridor collapse had done its job too well."

Elizabeth had her grimoires open.

"Whoa, whoa, calm down, Elizabeth..." the lead figure said. "You don’t want to kill everyone here with both of your grimoires."

She stared at the man for a moment, then at the symbol on his chest, and Rex saw the recognition pass over her face in a series of precise, controlled stages. Whatever it was she recognized, she had dealt with it before and had specific categories for it, indicating that she had prior experience with similar threats or organizations, which likely included the Anti-Reincarnator Legion.

"Who?" Rex asked right away.

"The Anti-Reincarnator Legion," she replied.

’What...?’ Rex thought. ’Another useful piece of information that doesn’t have its connection to the Underlayer or some shit...?’

"Our reputation precedes us," the man said. He sounded genuinely pleased about this.

"Kregg Valtor," Elizabeth said. "And that’s Virella Thorn."

"Still our reputation," Kregg said, and the woman at his right shoulder inclined her head without expression.

"Tell me it was a coincidence," Elizabeth said, "that you chose the canyon system where we had a missing subgroup to act as a draw."

"It wasn’t a coincidence," Kregg said pleasantly. "The subgroup was a useful early indicator."

"When they wandered into the third level without adequate preparation, we had an opportunity."

"We held them rather than dealt with them immediately because we knew they’d be noticed, and we knew that once they were noticed, whoever came to find them would be a better quality of target than the subgroup itself." He looked past Elizabeth, and Rex could tell he was assessing the composition of the expedition.

"We were particularly hoping for him," he said, and his eyes had settled on Apollo.

Apollo’s expression didn’t change dramatically, but Rex could see the specific, controlled tension that moved through him when he understood that he was the named target.

Rex looked at Kregg and then looked at the Key on the pedestal and thought, very clearly, about the variable that had just entered the calculation.

He thought about the primordial energy he was reading in these five people and where that power base originated, and he thought about Gelion Amorphis and his carefully maintained second-stratum contacts and his fourteen months of independent infrastructure-building inside the Underlayer, and the pieces connected in an unambiguous way.

"A question," Rex said, because the fastest way to get specific information was to ask for it directly with no indication of what you already knew. "Are you reincarnators?"

Kregg looked at him with what appeared to be genuine surprise. The question was so unexpected that it was almost amusing.

"No," he said. "None of us are..."

"That’s precisely the purpose."

"Natives of Erosyne, huh?" Rex said.

"All of us," Kregg confirmed.

He spread his hands in a gesture that was explanatory rather than threatening, like someone presenting an argument they’re confident in. "That’s all any of us are!"

"People who were born here, who built lives here, who watched the world we understood become populated with outsiders carrying powers that were never meant for this world, operating according to their own agendas without any regard for what their presence does to the people who were already here." His voice was still even.

The calmness he exhibited was not that of someone suppressing their feelings; instead, it reflected the calmness of someone whose conviction had matured beyond the point of heat. "The systems your gods distribute like prizes at a competition, the abilities that elevate individual reincarnators beyond the capacity of any local response to manage..."

"...the sheer numerical accumulation of ten thousand people, each with their own private advantage over the locals where they’ve landed—this is not a neutral phenomenon."

"It represents a systematic disadvantage imposed on an entire world that never consented to it."

The room was silent.

"You’re talking about people who exist here," Apollo said. His voice was controlled, but Rex could hear what was under it. "People who didn’t choose to be here and people who are trying to help."

"People who are trying to help," Kregg repeated, "by whose measurement? Yours? The goddess who sent you?"

He looked at Apollo with a patience that was not kindness. "We are not interested in having the world saved by people who were sent here by a divine apparatus we have no voice in!"

"We never asked for saviors, but we asked only to be left alone by outsiders!"

"And so you trapped expedition members," Iris said from the left edge of the formation.

"We used leverage that was available," Virella Thorn said. It was the first thing she’d said, and her voice was precise and completely dispassionate. "The individuals we detained are alive and minimally harmed."

"That was a choice we made deliberately."

"And the mage in the upper chambers?" said Aisella.

A pause. "That situation was not according to my instruction," Kregg said.

He looked at one of the three figures in the rear triangle for a brief moment, and whatever he communicated in that look was not warm. "It will be addressed internally."

Rex looked at the Key on the pedestal. He looked at Kregg.

He considered Gelion’s second-stratum contacts, the disruptions to the east approach, and the two years of targeted activity that Durvan had described, as well as an organization that possessed the reach, information infrastructure, and specific technical capacity to accomplish all of that.

He believed Gelion was probably a spy in the Underlayer. Although not a member of the Legion, Gelion was still a reincarnator, a status the Legion categorically rejected.

However, he served as a contact.

It was like a bridge. This individual had a vested interest in the Key and was using the Legion’s surface activity to further his own distinct agenda related to the second-stratum contact strategy. This may involve manipulating interactions between the Legion and other factions to achieve his goals.

The bridge Gelion had mentioned when Rex had dismantled his plan—that was the Legion. The Key retrieval he’d been planning had Legion fingerprints on its access strategy.

Rex hadn’t had enough information to see it at the time.

But now... he had enough.

He kept this entirely internal and watched Kregg.

"The Key," said Rex.

Kregg glanced at the pedestal. "Yes. We have it."

"Why?"

"Because the Underlayer is another place your kind has taken root," Kregg said, "and because its entrance is a resource the native population of this world should control."

He regarded Rex with a level of attention he had not previously shown, and Rex realized that Kregg had not yet fully categorized him. "You are a System Holder, a Knowledge User, a Combat Specialist..."

He continued in the tone of a professional assessor running through a classification.

"And you," he paused. "Your group has at least three confirmed Reincarnators."

"We located them on the surface approach, which took several days of observation, but you’re somehow... a little more difficult to place."

"I hear that all the time," Rex said. "And it seems like I already know your clown group goal is to kill all reincarnators, huh?"

"Correct."

"You’re not being double-standard pricks, are you...?" Rex asked. "There are no reincarnators in that Legion?"

"None."

Apollo stepped ahead.

The light that came off him when he fully engaged his Apostle designation had a particular quality that Rex had noted before, not aggressive, not threatening in the conventional sense, but deeply, fundamentally present, a warmth that was the opposite of subtle. It filled the chamber in the way that absolute certainty fills a space.

"Reincarnators have the right to exist here," Apollo said. "Whatever the argument about systems and advantages and divine agendas, the individual people are real."

"They have lives here."

"They have people who depend on them, people they love, and contributions they’ve made to this world."

"Treating them as a problem to be solved is wrong, and I’m not going to stand here and negotiate with people who trapped my friends and killed someone in this cave while they explain to me why they think mass elimination is justified."

The light intensified, and Rex could see the shift happening across the chamber as the Legion members registered it and reassessed their formation. "We are getting that Key, and you are going to answer for what happened to that mage, and this conversation is over."

Kregg looked at him with the calmness of someone who had expected this exact response. Virella was already adjusting her stance.

Rex raised both hands, allowing flames to flicker across them, slow and deliberately visible. This display communicated intent rather than suggesting immediate action: I am here, I am participating, I am choosing a side.

The fire danced in the chamber air, casting warm light across the stone walls. In the glow, Rex’s expression remained calm and entirely controlled.

He was already making the secondary calculation, the one that ran underneath the primary declaration. There were five Legion members present in the large chamber.

He needed one of them isolated for interrogation. Not Kregg, not Virella, one of the rear three, the one Kregg had looked at when the mage’s death was raised, because that was the one who had done something outside the official instructions and would have a different relationship to fear and consequence than the others.

His foresight outlined the shape of the room and predicted how things would move once Apollo was activated and the fight started, and he focused on the left back part of the Legion formation where the most important conversation was about to happen.

The fire in his hands burned in steady, patient arcs, and the chamber held its breath.