Chapter 182: War

The air sizzled as bolts of sky-blue lightning shot down from above, converging on the massive centaur standing with his bow at the ready. Harvey could hear Conquest scream in rage, but couldn’t see him through the dense cloud of mist that rose up around him when the lightning vaporized the water gathered around his feet. Stray bolts coursed through the knee-high water covering the battlefield, ravaging the pack of hellhounds escorting their apocalyptic master. It seemed the pain partially broke whatever spell was keeping the hounds from rampaging like their lone brethren, sending them thrashing into their neighbors.“Damn!” Tyler exclaimed as he fumbled with the empty magazine he’d just pulled from his gun. Tossing it off the side of the shell, he patted around his waist for his slipsack. It took multiple attempts to even find the leather pouch, and even longer for him to properly seat the new mag into the weapon. Normally, he could’ve reloaded much faster, but none of them could tear their eyes away from the carnage.

An arrow tore through the fog, pulling a trail of mist behind it as it soared into the storm. The Fulgur Phoenix the shot was aimed at, surprisingly dextrous despite being the size of a small plane, used its three sets of wings to shoot up into the clouds, easily dodging the attack.

New water from the Floodtusks' seemingly endless streams rushed to fill the hole around Conquest, replacing what was now rising up to join the dense clouds above. Like the portion siphoned off from the original streams, it seemed that whatever was lost to the lightning would only add to the chaotic barrage of heat-seeking raindrops assaulting the hellhounds.

“So far, so good!” Steve cheered as he too sprayed silver into the crowd.

“Dad!” Harvey complained. He’d never been a superstitious man, but he couldn’t afford not to be now that essence had completely reshaped his understanding of reality. For all he knew, another dragon could swoop down and cook him inside his own armor. The fact he’d survived two already surely meant his luck was about to run out.

[Reload!] Julius called as the revolver floating beside Harvey jostled up and down, trying to extricate spent casings so Harvey could conjure new bullets in their place. Using the link established by Awakened Armament, he was able to conjure five new Heaven’s Wrath rounds with Echo Forge while never physically touching the gun.

[Eyes on your own test!] Julius complained. [You can’t expect me to be a perfect shot after a few minutes. Besides, I haven’t had a body in a while!]

Harvey complained as he worked to reload his own gun. He didn’t carry much normal ammunition around since he’d started making his own, but Adrian had produced a metal crate full of loaded mags that all the other angels were pulling from.

[Close enough! How can you even tell how many hits I’m getting?]

As Conquest continued fruitlessly shooting arrows into the sky, the first of the hellhounds struggling to brave the torrent reached the wall below. They bit and slashed at the cathedral beetles, but neither the chitin covering their angular heads nor their stained glass shells was easy to crack. The beetles couldn’t fight back while holding the line, but that’s where the angels standing atop the marblebacks came in. Any hound that managed not to get blown away by the tide found a pair of bullets lodged in their brain, falling into the water to be carried away in a pool of red.

With the horseman distracted and the hellhounds utterly ineffective, things were going much better than Harvey expected. He could see the swarm of brimfiends and lines of Helltaurs marching in the distance, but he imagined that the same combination of soaking and shocking them would be just as effective. The only thing Heaven’s army lacked was creatures to maintain the pressure between the intermittent bolts of lightning. With the phoenixes all focusing their fire on the horseman, other sections of the wall farther down the line were being forced to contend with more hellhounds reaching the wall. Harvey even saw one pile grow large enough for a hound to scramble over one of the stained-glass shells and tumble onto the beetle’s back. It bit deep into the fleshy vents releasing waves of healing mist, carving a deep wound before a well-placed bullet sent it tumbling to the ground.

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It was an ugly sight, but nowhere near as bad as some of the other horrors Harvey had seen. The horsemen would keep coming towards his section of the wall since it blocked Hell’s shortest path to the next sealed node of infernal essence being protected by one of Heaven’s Lieutenants, but as long as they dealt with them quickly, it looked like Heaven could manage the weaker monsters.

As if God was listening, a second barrage of lightning crashed down over Conquest. A fresh batch of mist rose into the air, but Harvey could see the shadow of his hulking body writhing in pain. The demon stumbled out of the cloud, tripping over the steaming corpses of his hellhounds and collapsing into the water.

Once pristine, white hair was singed black by the first bolts of lightning, and now patches of flesh were sloughing off after the second. The bow that had shot straight through a Sentinel’s shield was gone, dropped into the water when his muscles seized and betrayed him.

“Finish him!” Celeste commanded, and the whole squad turned to unload their rifles into the fallen centaur. Well-trained soldiers, they all stopped firing simultaneously when the kill notification they’d been waiting for appeared in their minds. Nobody stopped to read it, all turning back to the onslaught without a second thought.

Ahead, the lines of marching Helltaurs parted to allow a second centaur to take its place in the front. Where Conquest had looked every inch the regal commander, War looked like a true barbarian.

Instead of golden platemail, his chest was covered with bloody furs and hard leather. A set of primal axes forged of bone and black metal hung from loops around his belt, adding to the ominous appearance of the red hair covering his lower half.

Even as the rain pounding into the army grew heavier and the storm grew louder, Harvey could hear his shout as the minotaurs began charging towards the wall. Unlike the hellhounds, who seemed like fodder at this point, this army was closely followed by ranged support that couldn’t be dealt with so easily.

Harvey expected their charge to be slowed by the countless bodies floating in the water beneath their feet, but the hulking creatures crushed them like rotten tomatoes and kept going. Seeing how effective the lightning was, he began conjuring arc charges and hurling them as far as he could. Clearly disappointed in his brother’s arm, Tyler snatched a pair out of his hands and threw them farther down the line.

“Not too far! They have to stay in range of my aura!” Harvey warned.

Tyler threw the first charge out of reach before he could activate it, but Harvey could still feel the second. Conjuring so many of the inscribed lightning balls at once was eating through a decent chunk of his essence reserves, but he was hoping the extra shock might stun the demons long enough to cause a stampede.

Once his aura was full of nodes waiting to be activated with Modular Array, he anxiously awaited the approaching army. There were still hellhounds scrabbling against the wall below, but he ignored them. His timing needed to be perfect, and the constant stream of bullets and occasional snap of a giant tortoise head darting out of the shells to chomp a hellhound in half should be enough for the moment.

War and his Helltaurs grew closer, kicking up spouts of water tainted with blood and mud with every step. He let them pass his furthest thrown traps, waiting until the bulk of the army was standing amongst his charges.

With a thought, the small area in front of Harvey’s shell became a roiling sea of lightning. He purposely overcharged the arrays, turning the strong but stable stream of bolts into an explosion of electricity and untamed essence. One of his earliest F-Grade creations, the arc charges weren’t enough to outright kill a Helltaur, even a sopping wet one. What it could do was stun it long enough for the minotaurs behind it to topple like bowling pins.

Raging bellows filled the air as their charge ground to a halt, exposing their backs to a rain of bullets. When those didn’t seem to do much more than annoy the beasts even further, the angels switched to skills that shot beams of searing light, holy lightning, or conjured divine creatures that leaped down to assault the vulnerable beasts. Those attacks were a little more effective, but plenty still got to their feet and followed War as he continued charging towards the wall.

Unlike Conquest, who’d been kind enough to stay well away from Harvey and his family, War was charging straight towards them. The Marbleback they stood upon darted out to snap at the centaur, but two brutal axes sank into the side of its head in a lightning-quick motion. Injured and afraid, it tried to retreat into its shell, but War wasn’t willing to let go. The muscles on its right arm bulged as it yanked the head out farther, exposing its soft neck to the blade of the other axe.

Despite its size, the chirps the tortoise let out as the blades bit deeper and deeper were soft and small. Harvey couldn’t see the centaur anymore over the edge of the shell, but the death throes rattling the marble nearly knocked him off his feet. Finally, the chirping stopped, and the shell went deathly still.

Despite the storm roiling overhead and the war raging beneath, the world seemed to go quiet. Harvey took a tentative step toward the edge, trying to get a better look at what was happening below.

He froze when two massive, bloody hands clasped the wet marble.