Chapter 126: Escape from Gulag

Bullets ripped through the sulfurous air. The rapid tat-tat-tat of a heavy machine gun echoed off the basalt cliffs. Dirt and stone chips erupted around Su Yao’s feet as she dove behind a shattered rock column.

“Where is this, Gallipoli?” she shouted over the relentless din. Bullets whined as they ricocheted off the stone.

Jeon Woochi pulled Malphas down beside him in a shallow trench, little more than a scar in the earth. “The Bolsheviks should not have this kind of sustained firepower. Those are water-cooled Maxims.”

Malphas peered over the trench edge. A line of muzzle flashes winked at them from a fortified ridge two hundred yards away. “They liberated the armories. Andras and Leraje kept extensive collections of mortal weapons. The commissar’s forces seized them.”

Another burst stitched the ground above their heads. Hot brass shell casings glinted as they rained down the enemy slope.

“So hell’s generals were arms dealers on the side,” Su Yao muttered. She phased, appearing for a second on top of the column to assess the field. A bullet passed through her fading afterimage. She reappeared in the trench. “There are three nests. They have overlapping fields of fire. We can’t cross here.”

Jeon Woochi scooped a handful of pebbles into his palm. He tossed them into the air, watching their pattern as they fell. “The left nest reloads in seven-second intervals and the right nest fires in five-second bursts. The center is the constant. We go between the rhythms.”

“My mobility is impaired,” Malphas said, black fluid dripping from her shoulder onto the trench floor. It sizzled.

“Then we create a new path.” Su Yao closed her eyes. She reached into the memory of stone and fire, pulling at the heat deep beneath the hellscape. The ground in front of their trench began to bubble. Molten rock pushed upward, forming a twisting wall of cooling basalt.

The machine gun fire shifted, pounding against the new barrier. Chunks of hot rock flew.

“Go!” Su Yao yelled.

Jeon Woochi went first, zigzagging between bursts. Malphas followed, running with a loping gait. Su Yao covered the rear, deflecting stray rounds with bursts of foxfire.

They reached the cover of a dry riverbed, the gunfire fading behind them.

Malphas slumped against the bank, her breath ragged. “The Gulag is half a mile east. Past the next ridge. Expect more liberated artillery.”

Jeon Woochi offered her a strip of cloth from his robe. “Tie off the leakage. We need you conscious.”

She took the cloth with her remaining hand. “Sentiment again?”

“You’re the only one who knows what Sitri looks like.” Su Yao scanned the ridge ahead. “Let’s move before they bring up a mortar.”

A sharp whistle pierced the air. It came from high above, growing louder.

“Down!” Jeon Woochi yelled.

The mortar shell struck the lip of the riverbed ten yards behind them, exploding with a crump. Hot shrapnel and shattered basalt rained down as the concussive wave punched the air from Su Yao’s lungs. Dirt rained down on her back.

Another whistle followed.

They scrambled forward along the dry riverbed as the second shell landed closer. Heat seared Su Yao’s neck. The world narrowed to the thunder of impacts and the acrid smell of cordite and brimstone.

Malphas dragged herself alongside them. Embedded in her remaining shoulder was a piece of jagged metal. She pulled it out and tossed it aside. “They’re like children with a new toy. They found the mortar section and now they must test every round.”

A third shell exploded overhead. The riverbed’s overhang cracked. Rubble fell.

“Move!” Su Yao grabbed Malphas by the back of her dress and phased them both forward twenty yards in a blur. Jeon Woochi rolled ahead, his form becoming a streak of motion that seemed to slip between the falling stones.

They rounded a bend in the riverbed. The mortar strikes pursued them, walking their explosions closer. Dirt geysers erupted at their heels.

“They have spotters,” Jeon Woochi gasped, sliding behind a large boulder that had fallen into the gully. “On the ridge. We need to silence them.”

Malphas leaned against the boulder, her breathing loud and strained. “Or we reach the Gulag’s outer wire. Their artillery will not shell their own prison, probably.”

Another shell shrieked in. They pressed flat against the boulder. The explosion sent gravel and hot metal fragments showering over them. In Su Yao’s ears, the ringing sharpened into a piercing whine.

“They’re enthusiastic,” Malphas observed. She clutched her shoulder where the black fluid now seeped through Jeon Woochi’s cloth bandage. “The commissar promotes based on artillery accuracy. This is someone trying for a promotion.”

Jeon Woochi risked a glance around the boulder. “The spotters are on that eastern ridge. We can’t reach them without crossing open ground.”

“Then we don’t cross.” Su Yao closed her eyes, reaching out with her senses. The mortar positions were farther back, but the spotters’ focus was a bright spark. She wrapped a thread of illusion around that attention, feeding it a false image. There is nothing here. See movement to the north.

The next whistle went long, exploding a hundred yards behind them.

“They took the bait.” She opened her eyes. “We have maybe a minute. Move.”

They abandoned the cover of the boulder, scrambling down the riverbed. The gully began to shallow. Barbed wire appeared ahead, strung between rusted iron posts. Beyond it, watchtowers of blackened wood stood against the red haze of the sky.

“This is the Gulag’s outer perimeter,” Malphas said. She swayed on her feet. “The artillery will stop. But the guards will not.”

The mortar strikes ceased. Silence settled, broken only by the distant clang of a bell and the rhythmic sound of digging.

Jeon Woochi caught Malphas as her knees buckled. “You’re deteriorating.”

“The wound rejects stability,” she said. “It’s a conceptual injury and unravels me piece by piece. I will last long enough to identify Sitri, nothing more.”

Su Yao studied the wire. “Sentries patrol every two hundred feet, two per tower.”

“The commissar preaches equality,” Malphas whispered. “Yet he builds walls and posts guards. How revolutionary.”

“Save the critique for after we steal his specialist,” Jeon Woochi said. He lowered her to sit against the gully slope. “Can you walk the final stretch?”

“I can crawl if necessary.” Malphas tilted her head, managing a smile. “But a distraction would be preferable, something loud that appeals to their newfound love for explosives.”

Su Yao followed her gaze to a nearby storage shed just outside the wire. Stacked haphazardly around it were crates. One was marked with Infernal script she recognized as Incendiary Rounds.

“You want us to blow up their ammunition depot.”

“It’s a valid tactical objective,” Malphas said. “And it will be very bright.”

Jeon Woochi sighed. “Random bullshit go.”

Su Yao’s lips curved into a smile. “I will handle the distraction. You get her to the wire. Find a weak point in the fence. I will meet you inside after the fireworks.”

She phased and materialized behind the stacked crates. The wood was rough under her palms, soaked through with the oily residue of hellish manufacturing. She placed a hand on the crate marked with incendiary runes.

A thread of her power slithered through the wood like a fuse.

From within, the crate glowed red. Then it erupted.

The explosion tore the shed apart in a column of white-hot fire and concussive force. Shrapnel scythed through the air. A shockwave rolled across the ground, shaking the watchtowers. Secondary detonations occurred as adjacent crates caught. Even from distance, a wave of intense heat washed over Su Yao.

Alarm bells began clanging. Shouts rose in Russian, boots pounding the ground toward the fire.

At the wire, Jeon Woochi took advantage of the screaming. He focused on a single link of barbed wire, whispering a word of corrosion. The metal flaked into rust. Creating a narrow gap, he pulled the strands apart.

“Go,” he urged, supporting Malphas’s weight.

They slipped through the breach as guards rushed past them, yelling about containing the blaze. Inside the perimeter, the air grew colder. Long barracks lined muddy paths. The rhythmic sound of digging came from a vast quarry pit ahead.

Malphas leaned on him, her gaze scanning the faces of the prisoners shuffling under demonic guard. “Sitri is aristocratic. She will not be in the general population. Look for a solitary confinement block. Or an administrative building she might be ‘consulting’ from.”

Jeon Woochi guided them into the shadow of a barracks wall. “How do you know she is even alive?”

“The commissar is pragmatic. He does not waste useful tools before breaking them to his will.” Malphas pointed a trembling finger toward a stone structure with barred windows. “There. That is where he puts the special prisoners. The ones with knowledge he wants to extract.”

A squad of Bolshevik vestiges double-timed past, their boots slapping the mud in unison.

Su Yao appeared beside them. “The depot is enjoying its second act. We have maybe five minutes before they realize it was sabotage.”

“Then we move,” Jeon Woochi said.

They crossed the open compound, reaching the stone building’s heavy iron door locked with a physical padlock and a shimmering ward of crimson energy.

Su Yao examined the ward. “It’s a pain glyph. Touch it with hostile intent, and it feeds on your life force.”

Malphas chuckled. “How pedestrian. A simple reversal loop will collapse it. My sister taught me that one.” With her one hand, she traced a counter-sigil in the air. The crimson ward flashed and dissolved.

Su Yao shattered the padlock with a thought. The iron door swung inward.

A narrow corridor stretched into darkness inside, smelling of damp stone. A flickering bulb illuminated a row of cell doors.

From the deepest shadows, a voice spoke. “I suppose you aren’t my scheduled interrogators. The uniforms are all wrong.”

A woman stood at the barred door of the end cell. Her hair was the color of pale ash, her eyes a luminous gold. She wore the remnants of an elegant dress, now stained and torn.

Malphas straightened as much as she could. “Sitri. We are here to liberate you.”

Sitri looked at them. “Liberate me? How quaint. And what do my liberators desire in return?”

“Your expertise,” Su Yao said, stepping forward. “We need you to heal a wound that rejects healing.”

Sitri smiled. “A conceptual injury? How fascinating. And what makes you think I will help you?”

“Because the alternative is staying here,” Jeon Woochi said. “And the commissar will eventually break you or shoot you.”

“True.” Sitri tilted her head and reached through the bars. “Unlock the door. I dislike cramped spaces. Then we can discuss your intriguing problem.”

Su Yao touched the cell lock. It yielded to her will, melting into slag. The door creaked open. Sitri stepped out, stretching her arms. “Now,” she said, fixing her gaze on Malphas’s corroded shoulder. “Let me see this impossibility.”

Sitri’s fingers hovered above the seeping wound. Her eyes narrowed. “Reality itself is rejecting her.”

Black fluid dripped onto the stone floor. Each drop sizzled, etching a tiny crater.

“Explain,” Su Yao said. The distant shouts from the firefight sounded muffled in the narrow corridor.

“Reality itself will not accept her presence here,” Sitri said, circling Malphas. “The commissar’s blow enforced a logical conclusion. She should be dead. Her continued existence is an error. Reality is now… correcting that error.”

Malphas leaned against the wall. “I’m not dead.”

“You’re correct. That is the problem.” Sitri stopped before her. “Your essence refuses the conclusion. You cling. So reality claws at you, piece by piece. It tries to erase the contradiction. You’re a grammatical mistake in a sentence that wants to make sense.”

Jeon Woochi frowned. “There is always a solution.”

“There is.” Sitri folded her arms. “She must accept the conclusion and die.”

“No,” Malphas said.

“A demon’s death is a transition,” Sitri said. “You undergo reconstitution. Your essence disperses. It reforms elsewhere, whole again. That’s why our kind are often ‘banished’ or ‘purged’ rather than killed. The process is both irritating and lengthy. It can take centuries. But you return.”

Malphas shook her head, causing more fluid to leak. “That isn’t an option.”

“Why?” Su Yao asked. “Centuries are nothing to you.”

“Because I will lose my post.” Malphas looked at each of them. “My sister would claim my duties and my lord might reassign my station. I will return to find my office given to a lesser demon with better political connections. The reconstitution process is a career nightmare.”

Jeon Woochi blinked. “You’re choosing existential unraveling over administrative inconvenience?”

Malphas pushed herself upright. “A temporary wound is preferable to a permanent demotion.”

Sitri sighed. “Then you will continue to unravel. You will become a walking paradox until even your defiance ceases to matter. The correction will complete itself.”

Alarm bells changed tempo outside. The shouts grew more closer.

“They’re searching the compound,” Jeon Woochi said, glancing back down the corridor.

“Then we move,” Su Yao said. She looked at Malphas. “Your choice stands. But if you dissolve into a puddle of logical fallacy before we defeat the commissar, I’m not carrying you.”

Malphas nodded. “Understood. Now, shall we exit this prison? I believe our distraction is burning out.”

A thunderous crash echoed from the main cell block. The sound of splintering wood and twisting iron followed as a roar of dozens of voices swelled.

“The sheep are awake,” Sitri said, a smile touching her lips.

They reached the corridor’s entrance as the tide broke. Prisoners poured from a shattered barracks door. They were an assembly of demons with broken horns and mortal vestiges in torn uniforms wielding shovels, sharpened rocks, or their own chained hands.

Guards shouted, leveling rifles. A volley rang out. Three prisoners fell. Twenty more surged over them, dragging the guards down into the churning mob.

“They have been waiting for a spark,” Jeon Woochi said. He pulled Malphas back into the shadows as a wave of escapees flooded the yard.

“Our spark works too well,” Su Yao said. The guards’ formation crumpled under the desperate weight. “This is our cover. We move with the crowd.”

They slipped into the edge of the rushing crowd. A demon with one eye knocked over a watchtower ladder. Prisoners swarmed up it, grappling with the guards above.

“To the gate!” someone said in Goetic. “The main gate!”

The mob turned as one, flowing toward the compound’s entrance. Guards there braced, bayonets fixed.

“Not that way,” Malphas hissed. “That is a kill box. They will be mowed down.”

“Then we go a different way,” Su Yao said, grabbing Sitri’s arm. “You know this place. Is there a secondary exit? A weak wall?”

Sitri’s eyes scanned the compound. “The commissar is arrogant. He relies on fear and wire. The western wall is near the quarry. Its foundation is undermined by the digging. Only stone and hate keep it standing.”

“West it is.” Jeon Woochi guided Malphas, supporting her weight as they broke from the main crowd, darting between barracks.

Shots continued to echo. The roar of the mob at the main gate mingled with the machine guns.

They reached the western perimeter. The wall here was high, but long cracks snaked up its face. Beyond it, the ground fell away into the quarry’s dark pit. The digging had stopped. Now the workers were part of the revolt.

“Stand back,” Su Yao said. She felt the wall’s deep fatigue beneath her palms and introduced temporal decay.

A section of wall ten feet wide groaned. It buckled inward, then crumbled outward in a cascade of rubble and dust. A twisted path led back toward the trench lines.

“That works,” Jeon Woochi said.

They climbed over the broken stones. Malphas stumbled and Jeon Woochi caught her. Sitri stepped through, adjusting the torn remains of her dress as she went.

Su Yao looked back once at the raging compound where the flames from the ammunition depot still lit the sky. The gunfire at the main gate continued. They’re buying us time with their lives.

Then she turned and followed the others into the jagged darkness beyond the wall. The commissar’s Gulag faded behind them, its bell still clanging.