Chapter 124: A Worthy Opponent

“Could I conquer this place myself?” Su Yao mused, her eyes tracking the commissar’s movements. “If I claimed this territory in the name of King Yama, perhaps he would owe me a favor. I could request the soul of the novelist who wrote Azure Mist Chronicles. A century of creative torment sounds appropriate.”

Halphas turned toward her. “Whatever you’re thinking, stop. That idea is stupid. You should never have vocalized it.”

“Why? It’s a solid plan.” Su Yao refused to back down.

“King Yama judges the dead of the Eastern afterlife. He does not traffic in real estate claims from rogue foxes in a Western demonic plane,” Halphas said. “You would gain nothing but his annoyance. More importantly, you would need to actually conquer this territory first. Look at it.”

Another volley of gunfire peppered the rocks near them. Chips of black stone stung Su Yao’s arm.

“You’re facing a motivated and organized military force of demon-turned soldiers,” Halphas continued. “They are led by a tactical genius who believes his cause is holy. You’re one fox. A powerful fox, but still one. This is a war of attrition you can’t win.”

Jeon Woochi cleared his throat. “She is correct. Your gateway must be sealed, or moved. The vestiges must be prevented from discovering it. Grand ambitions will only get you killed here.”

Su Yao watched a Bolshevik scout dart between two rocks, getting closer to their position. The scout fixed his eyes on the area where her illusion shimmered. He sees the flaw.

“Fine,” she said. “Then we move the gateway. We collapse this front. How?”

Halphas turned toward the shimmer in the air and raised one hand. Her fingers curled into a claw, and a sound like tearing silk ripped through the battlefield.

The illusion Su Yao cast shredded first. Then the stable arch of green light twisted in on itself. The view of the dusty factory floor cracked and vanished. Only a scorched mark on the basalt remained where the gateway had been.

Su Yao stared at the empty space. “What did you do?”

“I removed the variable.” Halphas lowered her hand. “The infection vector is now cauterized.”

Jeon Woochi stepped forward. “You stranded us.”

“Only her,” Halphas said. “You’re a permanent resident, Tenkuji. You can leave through your own paths. The fox has no such privilege. She is now a contained element within the operational theater.”

The scent of the factory was gone. Only the sulfurous wind of Gehenna remained. It scratched at Su Yao’s skin. I’m trapped.

Su Yao turned to Halphas. “You utter fool. I’m not a piece on your board.”

“You’re a chaos agent who opened a door in a war zone. Your portal threatened the integrity of both planes. My mandate is to preserve order. This was the simplest solution.”

“You could have warned me!”

“Warning you would have allowed debate. Action required none.” Halphas smoothed her dress. “The problem of the gateway is solved. Your new problem is survival. I suggest you focus on that.”

Su Yao looked at Jeon Woochi. He gave a slight shake of his head. Fighting her here gains you nothing.

The commissar’s whistle blew again. It was closer now. The scout reached the scorched mark. He knelt, touching the hot rock with a gloved hand. Then he looked up. His eyes locked onto Su Yao, and he shouted back toward the trees.

Halphas began to fade, becoming translucent. “Good luck, fox. Try not to start another revolution before I return.” She dissolved into frost and shadow as the Bolshevik vestiges advanced.

“Why isn’t she helping?” Su Yao asked. The advancing line of vestiges was close enough that she could see the determined set of their jaws. “She wants order. This is her chance to fight for it.”

Jeon Woochi grabbed her arm, pulling her behind a thicker outcropping of rock. Bullets began pinging against the stone. “Halphas is afraid of them.”

“She’s a demonic warden. A countess of Gehenna.” Su Yao pulled her arm free.

“Exactly.” He peered around the rock. “The Bolsheviks overthrew her kind. They executed captured nobles and found ways to make the pain permanent. Halphas survived by being useful, by turning warden. That shame lives in her. Pride forces her to call it pragmatism.”

A shell whistled overhead. The explosion made the ground tremble. Jeon Woochi nodded toward a narrow fissure in the cliff face behind them. “We should move. They will encircle this position in three minutes.”

Su Yao looked at the scorched mark. Survive first.Then find a way back and find Halphas.

“Where does that fissure lead?” she asked.

“Away from here. For now, that is all that matters.”

“We should cut off the head,” Su Yao said. “If we remove their commissar, their morale fractures. They might turn on each other. A leaderless revolution is easier to manage.”

From the shadows of the fissure, a voice answered. “Allow me to help you with that.”

A woman in black dress stepped forward. She matched Halphas’s height and facial features. Her hair was the color of ink, falling straight to her shoulders.

“Halphas,” Su Yao looked at her. “Changing your color scheme does not make you a new person.”

“My name is Malphas. I’m her twin sister.”

“You’re her, playing a role,” Su Yao said. “You stranded me here. Now you want to help?”

“My sister values order above all. She sees a problem and she seals it. But I value opportunity. I see a problem and I ask who benefits from its solution.”

Jeon Woochi studied the new arrival. His eyes narrowed. “The Ars Goetia lists a Malphas.”

“See?” Malphas smiled. “The Daoist believes his book.”

“That proves nothing. You look identical and sound similar. This is a ploy.”

“Halphas fears these mortals,” Malphas said, tilting her head toward the advancing lines. “Her fear makes her rigid. My sister would never offer to assassinate a revolutionary leader. She would call it an unacceptable risk.”

Su Yao watched the black-haired figure. She could be lying. Or she could be telling the truth.

Both possibilities were dangerous.

“Why would you help me?” Su Yao asked.

“Because you’re already here.” Malphas lowered her hands. “And because my sister made you my problem. She stranded you in my operational zone. I clean up her messes. It’s our dynamic.”

A bullet struck the rock near Su Yao’s head. Stone fragments dusted her cheek.

“We need to move,” Jeon Woochi said, glancing at the line of fire.

Malphas gestured toward the deeper darkness of the fissure. “This path leads to the rear of their position. I know the routes they don’t watch. Do you want the commissar dead?”

Su Yao met her gaze and nodded. “Lead the way.”

They moved single-file through the narrow fissure, the rock walls pressing in.

“Why haven’t you killed him yourself?” Su Yao asked. “If you want him gone and you know the routes, why do you need me?”

“I already killed him.”

Su Yao stopped. Jeon Woochi almost bumped into her. Only the distant echoes of battle and the drip of something oily from the ceiling broke the silence.

“What do you mean, you already killed him?” Su Yao said,.

“I mean I put a blade through his heart and shot him in the head three times.” Malphas looked back over her shoulder. “But he refuses to stay dead. He always returns.”

“A vestige can’t be permanently destroyed without unmaking its core,” Jeon Woochi said. “That is standard.”

“This is different.” Malphas turned and continued walking. “Vestiges can be unmade. Their demonic core can be shattered. I know how to do this. His core refuses to break. Something is reinforcing it and causing the commissar to resurrect after every death.”

The passage opened into a small cavern. Faint luminescent fungus gave the space a green glow. Malphas faced them.

“I need you because your methods are unfamiliar to whatever rules this place.” She folded her arms. “My sister sealed your exit. I offer you a purpose. Help me discover why he can’t die, and you might learn how to make a door home.”

The distant crump of artillery echoed through the cavern. Su Yao watched the light play across Malphas’s face. “There is an old story from the north,” she said. “A story about a man who could not be killed.”

Jeon Woochi leaned against the damp wall. “You speak of Koschei.”

“Koschei hid his death inside a needle sealed within an egg,” Su Yao said. “The egg lay inside a duck, the duck within a hare, and the hare was locked in an iron chest. That chest was buried beneath a green oak tree on a faraway island. To kill him, you had to find the island, dig up the chest, catch the hare, then the duck, then break the egg, then snap the needle.”

Malphas froze. “You think his immortality works like this.”

“Someone who studied revolutionary theory might also study folklore. Especially a folkloric solution to a permanent revolution,” Su Yao said. “What if his demonic core is hidden elsewhere? You kill the vessel. The core simply rebuilds him. He returns.”

Jeon Woochi rubbed his chin. “It fits a certain logic. His death is externalized and his life is secured in a series of nested safeguards. A truly secure backup.”

“But where?” Malphas asked. “Where would he hide it? This plane is vast.”

“Where would a revolutionary hide his most precious asset?” Su Yao said. “With the people. Within the movement itself. Perhaps the egg was a soldier, the duck a regiment, and the hare an ideal.”

A sudden burst of machine gun fire rattled from somewhere above them. Dust sifted from the cavern ceiling.

“That is frustratingly abstract,” Malphas said. “We can’t kill every soldier.”

“We don’t need to.” Su Yao looked toward the sound of fighting. “We need to find the one thing that isn’t a soldier. The thing he has separated from himself, the needle.”

“You’re constructing a metaphor,” Jeon Woochi said.“A story. You’re as clueless as we are.”

Su Yao looked at him. The light carved shadows under her eyes. “The story gives us a shape to look for. It’s better than having no shape at all.”

Malphas sighed. “So this is guesswork.”

“I’m theorizing with available information.” Su Yao shrugged. “You said he returns. That means something brings him back. It’s either here, or it isn’t here. We start by looking here.”

Jeon Woochi pushed off the wall. “Then we are back at the beginning. We need to find a needle in a burning field.”

“First we need to leave this cave,” Su Yao said. She turned toward the deeper tunnel Malphas had indicated. “Your sister stranded me. You want to use me. Fine. But I’m not walking into a machine gun nest without a better plan than a fairy tale.”

She began walking again. Her footsteps echoed in the narrow space.

Malphas’s head fell from her shoulders. It hit the cavern floor with a damp thud. The sound echoed in the sudden silence.

Her body remained standing as her hands rose, groping through the air. They found her head and lifted it back into place. The neck reattached with a clicking sound.

“My apologies,” Malphas said. “It seems I have not fully healed from our last confrontation. The commissar is… thorough.”

Jeon Woochi stared. “You’re Malphas. Satan’s second in command. His left hand.”

“I’m.” She rotated her head, testing the connection.

“Yet he injured you like this.” Jeon Woochi’s eyes widened. “A vestige should not possess that capability.”

“Your observation is correct.” Malphas adjusted her head. “He should not possess the knowledge to harm me. But he does. He wields ancient sorceries and speaks curses lost to time. These are arts known only to a direct disciple of Solomon. Or perhaps Zirnitra, whose knowledge of the arcane is said to rival Solomon’s own.”

“The dragon-king of Slavic sorcery,” Su Yao said. “A calamity-level threat.”

“Yes,” Malphas said. “His bullets are sometimes just bullets. Other times, they carry the weight of a forgotten word. His bayonets cut flesh and soul-bond alike. I didn’t expect him to resist Goetic magic either.”

She turned her gaze toward the tunnel leading upward. “He is a mortal vestige with a demon’s core, but he is also a scholar of forbidden texts. This combination is unprecedented. It makes him strong and dangerous in ways we are still counting.”

A smile spread across Su Yao’s face. “Finally.”

Jeon Woochi frowned. “Finally what?”

“A worthy opponent.” She rolled her shoulders. “Someone who might actually make this interesting. My time here was starting to feel like paperwork.”

Malphas tilted her head. “You find this encouraging?”

“A revolutionary tactician with a demon’s core who commands lost sorceries?” She cracked her knuckles. “This is a problem with weight. Our battle will be legendary.”

“You’re insane,” Jeon Woochi said.

“Boredom does things to a person,” Su Yao said, her gaze fixed on the tunnel ahead. “He wants a permanent revolution. I want a challenge that lasts more than five minutes. This is an alignment of interests.”

“Malphas is stronger than you,” Jeon Woochi said. “Look at her. She still carries injuries from facing him. You have only heard a story.”

“Injuries are inevitable,” Su Yao said. “Scars are marks of honor. They mean you faced something worth fighting.”

“This isn’t a game.” Jeon Woochi took off his Imperial officer’s hat and set it on a rock. “Your confidence feels like arrogance. I need to know which it is. Let’s fight.”

Malphas took a step back, granting space.

Su Yao raised an eyebrow. “Here? Now?”

“Here and now.” Jeon Woochi unbuttoned his uniform jacket. Underneath, he wore simple gray robes. “You dealt with Sargatanas in Beijing, a contained entity. I dealt with Fleurety in Vladivostok, the great officer of hell who rode the frost of a dying star. If you can’t handle me, you will not handle the commissar.”

“Fleurety, the knight of the east,” Su Yao said. “You never mentioned that.”

“You never asked.” Jeon Woochi settled into a low stance. His hands opened, one palm up and one down. “Show me your worth, or admit your recklessness.”

Su Yao nodded. She mirrored his stance, one foot sliding back on the soft fungus. “Very well. Let’s begin.”

Malphas watched from the shadows. “Try not to bring the ceiling down. The acoustics here are terrible.”