Chapter 127: Believe in Satan

Malphas’s knees buckled. She hit the rocky ground with a heavy thud, her single arm barely catching her weight. The black fluid leaked faster now, forming a sizzling pool in the dirt.

“I believe my walking time is concluded,” she rasped.

Sitri knelt beside her. “Your humanoid form requires too much focus. Too much energy is wasted to maintain the illusion of cohesion. Assume your animagus form. It will demand less from you.”

Malphas frowned. “It’s undignified.”

“Dissolving into a puddle of existential error is also undignified.” Sitri said. “Become the crow. Now.”

Malphas closed her eyes and her body shuddered. The shredded black dress dissolved into wisps of shadow. Her form condensed, reshaping.

Feathers sprouted from the retreating darkness. Bones cracked and reformed on a smaller scale. A large crow now stood where Malphas had lain, its feathers the black of a starless night. One eye was bright, but the other was a swirling vortex. Its left wing hung limp, mirroring her missing arm.

The crow hopped once, then fluttered onto Jeon Woochi’s offered forearm.

“Better,” Sitri said. “The avian form simplifies her existence. Reality will have a harder time correcting a simple creature than a complex one. It may slow the unraveling.”

Su Yao observed the bird. “Can she still talk?”

The crow opened its beak. A distorted version of Malphas’s voice emerged. “I can. It’s… irritating. but functional.”

“Then function,” Jeon Woochi said, walking again along the twisted path. The crow tightened its talons on his robe sleeve to keep balance. “We need to find shelter. The commissar will send patrols after the jailbreak.”

The crow tilted its head, its good eye scanning the hellscape ahead. “There is an abandoned fissure network half a mile north. The vestiges avoid it. They say it whispers.”

“Whispers are fine,” Su Yao said, falling into step. “Machine guns are less fine. Lead the way.”

Sitri walked beside Jeon Woochi, her gaze fixed on the crow. “Endure the irritation. During the Great Flood, you held this form for forty days, perched on Noah’s ark as your sister became the dove. You also guided Cain to bury his brother’s body as a crow. This is a minor inconvenience.”

The crow’s head swiveled toward her. “The circumstances were different. I was on a mission back then. This is a tactical retreat. The degradation is distracting.”

“All existence is a mission,” Sitri said. “Your mission now is to avoid dissolving before we kill the commissar. A crow is adequate for that.”

The crow shifted its talons on Jeon Woochi’s sleeve.

They reached the edge of the fissure network. Deep cracks split the ground in a jagged line, leading down into darkness. Cold air wafted upward, carrying the smell of wet stone. Many voices murmured from the depths, just below hearing.

“The whispers,” Jeon Woochi noted.

“It’s just trapped air moving through hollows,” Sitri said, descending a natural stone ramp. “Or the echoes of things that prayed here before this place was hell. Ignore it.”

The crow fluttered from Jeon Woochi’s arm, gliding down into the fissure. It landed on an outcropping. “It’s defensible. Only one narrow path down. They can’t bring their machines here.”

Su Yao was the last to descend. She placed a hand on the fissure wall. The stone was cold and slick with moisture. “Then we plan our next move. The commissar knows we have his specialist. He will not let us go.”

“Good. Let him come. I’m tired of running.” The crow preened a feather back into place with its beak.

Su Yao leaned against the cold fissure wall. “The original plan was simple, we find the commissar and cut off his head. That plan assumed he was just a stubborn ghost with a rifle.”

The crow on the outcropping ruffled its feathers. “That plan is now obsolete.”

“He wounded you,” Su Yao continued. “You’re Satan’s Second in Command. That changes the threat assessment.”

Malphas let out a crackling caw. “There is a vast ocean of power between my lord and myself. The commissar should be no match for him. Satan would steamroll this entire rebellion without breaking a sweat.”

“Then our new plan is obvious,” Jeon Woochi said. “We summon Satan and inform him of the insurrection in his domain. He will handles it.”

Sitri laughed. “He is unavailable. My lord is currently occupied with the Solomon Company. He can’t be disturbed for a provincial matter like this.”

Su Yao’s eyes narrowed. “Who are the Solomon Company?”

“Think of the Illuminati,” Sitri said, examining her nails in the gloom. “Now imagine they were competent and successful. They are a thorn in my lord’s side that requires his personal attention. We are on our own.”

The crow fluttered down to a lower rock closer to them. “So we can’t call for help or kill him through conventional means. His death is hidden elsewhere. We have a specialist who can’t heal me. This is a deteriorating situation.”

“We need a new weapon,” Su Yao said. Her gaze lifted toward the fissure opening, where the red haze of Gehenna’s sky glowed. “Or we need to find his weakness faster than he finds us.”

A faint tremor passed through Sitri’s hands as she stared at the stone floor, eyes unfocused. “Competent. Yes, they are competent.”

Her breath hitched. Then she laughed. The sound bounced off the fissure walls, merging with the whispers.

Jeon Woochi took a step back. “Sitri.”

“What they wanted was a hell they could manage!” she announced to the empty air. “So they made the Illuminati look like children playing with matches!”

Sitri wrapped her arms around herself, her nails digging into the fabric of her stained dress. “My lord is contained. The Solomon Company has him in a box of their own design. They are restructuring the infernal hierarchy with corporate efficiency. This rebellion?” She gestured toward the fissure opening. “This is a symptom! A flare-up of chaos because the central authority is… is…”

She trailed off, breathing rapid and shallow. “They have the original seals and the true names. With them, they turned the great officers against each other. Fleurety and her crabs were a stupid distraction so we wouldn’t look at the boardroom!”

The crow hopped closer, head cocked. “You’re saying the Solomon Company orchestrated the officers’ absences.”

“They created the vacuum!” Sitri screamed. The sound ripped through the chamber. She slammed her fist against the rock wall. A small crack appeared in the stone. “They let the commissar in and probably trained him! A useful idiot to make us desperate so when they offer their new management contract we will sign it!”

Tears of golden light spilled from her eyes, cutting tracks through the dirt on her cheeks.

Jeon Woochi moved. “Sitri. You’re safe here for this moment.”

“No one is safe!” she sobbed, sliding down the wall into a crouch. “The rules are broken. Our house is burning and the fire department is owned by the arsonists!”

Su Yao knelt in front of her, blocking her view of the rock’s expanse. “Look at me.”

Sitri’s eyes focused on Su Yao’s face.

“The commissar is still the knife in front of us,” Su Yao said. “We deal with the knife first. Then we deal with the hand that holds it. You will help us. Pull yourself together. The alternative is lying down in this hole and waiting for the new management to fire you.”

Sitri’s breathing began to slow. With a trembling hand, she wiped away the tears. Moisture clung to her fingers as she stared at them, then looked up at Su Yao. A shuddering inhale and shaky exhale followed.

“The knife first,” she whispered.

“Yes,” Su Yao said.

“I require a moment,” Sitri said, closing her eyes and pressing her forehead to her knees. Her shoulders trembled once, then went still.

The crow sighed. “I should have recognized the pattern in their corporate obsession and systematic dismantling.” It preened a feather. “This complicates our retirement benefits.”

Su Yao waited until Sitri’s breathing evened out. Her tears had stopped. The whispers in the fissure quietened.

“Have some faith in your lord,” Su Yao said.

Sitri lifted her head. “Faith isn’t a tactical asset.”

“It’s when the entity in question is Satan,” Su Yao said. “You said the Solomon Company has him in a box and assume that means he is losing. Have you considered he might be letting them think that?”

The crow chuckled. “She has a point. My lord enjoys letting his enemies arrange the furniture before he burns the house down. It’s his sense of humor.”

“Your lord is the architect of rebellion,” Su Yao continued. “He wrote the book on temptation and subversion. A corporate takeover group, no matter how competent, is still playing a game he invented. Have faith that he is ten steps ahead.”

Sitri stared at her. “You believe he is manipulating them.”

“Well, he is Satan.” Su Yao stood, brushing dust from her knees. “He doesn’t lose boardroom fights because he corrupts the board. Now get up. We have a commissar to assassinate.”

Jeon Woochi offered Sitri a hand. Sitri took it, rising on unsteady legs. She smoothed her ruined dress. “The knife first,” she repeated.

“Good,” Su Yao said. She looked at the crow. “You said the whispers might be echoes of things that prayed here. Do they ever say anything useful?”

The crow tilted its head. “They say many things. Mostly they say ‘help’ and ‘why.’ Sometimes they name their gods. None of them answer anymore.”

“Then we rely on ourselves,” Su Yao said. She turned toward the narrow path leading back up. “We find where he hid his death and end the revolution before the real board meeting starts.”

“Listen to the names,” Sitri said. “The whispers name their gods: Andraste, Astarte, Baal, Dagon.”

She looked at each of them. “Our nobility shares those names: Andras, Astaroth, Bael, Zagan. They are the same entities, forgotten and renamed. The Celtic war goddess, the Mediterranean queen of love and war, the Mesopotamian storm god, the harvest god of the Philistines. Hell’s nobility is heaven’s discarded pantheon.”

“The commissar studies ancient sorceries,” the crow said. “He would know the original divine protocols.”

“Exactly.” Sitri’s fingers traced a phantom pattern in the air. “He is using the older rites. The ones that called to Andraste before she was Andras. This gives his magic a potency we dismissed.”

“So his power comes from speaking to what they were,” Su Yao said.

“Yes. It’s a brilliant perversion. A revolutionary calling on the old kings to overthrow their own decayed shadows,” Sitri said. “He offers them a return to purpose. It’s why his bullets wound us so deeply.”

Jeon Woochi crossed his arms. “We know how he fights. How does that help us find where he hid his death?”

“It tells us what he might have used to hide it,” the crow said. “He would use a divine anchor. Something from the world before the fall that still remembers a god’s true name.”

Su Yao smiled. “We find the anchor and break the connection. He becomes just a vestige again. Then we kill him.”

“Simple,” Jeon Woochi said.

“Finding a divine artifact in hell will not be simple,” Sitri said. “But it’s a better plan than storming his trenches.”

“Activating all the anchors would be one path,” Jeon Woochi said. “But there is a simpler, more dangerous method. There is no need to reclaim a forgotten name. You can steal a current one by walking like a god until the universe forgets the difference.”

The crow on his arm went still. “Mantling.”

“Yes.” Jeon Woochi nodded. “You mimic the god’s actions and fulfill their function so completely that reality’s ledger blurs. The universe looks at you and the original, then decides maintaining two separate entries is inefficient. It crosses one out. You become the thing you pretended to be.”

Su Yao considered this. “So if the commissar started acting like a war god…”

“He would slowly become one. The vestiges already worship his revolution. Their belief is a form of prayer. Every battle he wins is a ritual in his honor.” Jeon Woochi met her eyes. “The commissar may be building an anchor from scratch with every order he gives and every trench he holds.”

Sitri inhaled. “Like Romulus-Quirinus. It’s possible, and horrifying.” Her eyes widened. “He seeks to forge a new divine identity from revolution and class struggle.”

“How close is he?” Su Yao asked.

“Impossible to know,” Jeon Woochi said. “But every minute we spend hiding here is a minute he spends winning battles, consolidating belief, and walking a little more like a god. Our objective is to halt his transformation before it completes.”

“Wait,” Su Yao said. “What if we let him finish?”

Jeon Woochi stared at her. The crow’s head swiveled.

“Let him complete his apotheosis,” she continued. “Becoming a god isn’t the victory he thinks it is.”

Sitri’s eyes narrowed. “Explain.”

Su Yao leaned back against the stone. “A god needs followers and a domain. It’s function and worship that define them, and that definition creates weakness. I know this because I’ve held divine weapons. They’re powerful things but brittle, prone to breaking when you strike the right story.”

The crow hummed. “You’re speaking of conceptual vulnerability. A god of war falters without conflict and a god of harvest dies if the fields are salted.”

“Exactly,” Su Yao said. “A god of permanent revolution would draw strength from endless struggle. But what happens when that struggle succeeds? Or collapses? His own nature would become a cage, and his followers would become chains.”

Jeon Woochi rubbed his chin. “So your proposal is to let him build his own prison.”

“Yes.” She looked at each of them. “Gods are predictable. They follow rules. Demonic vestiges with stolen divine power are chaotic. Which is easier to fight?”

“Tír na nÓg,” Sitri said.“The Celtic otherworld. Its gods faded when the last believer died. A newborn god would be even more dependent on his believers. If we separate him from his followers…”

“Or if we change what they believe,” Malphas crackled from her perch. “A single heresy introduced at the right moment could unravel him from within.”

Su Yao nodded. “So we let him become a god. Then we give him the perfect faith-shattering crisis.”

The whispers in the fissure seemed to swell for a moment.

“It’s a risk,” Jeon Woochi said, eyes fixed on the darkness.

“Less risk than charging a machine gun nest to find a hidden needle,” Su Yao said. “We make his victory his defeat.”

The crow fluttered its good wing. “I hate this plan, but it’s the first intelligent thing we have proposed. How do we begin?”

“We find his followers,” Su Yao said, pushing off from the wall. “And we start a rumor.”