Chapter 186: Aftermath

“P-p-please…” the mother, fearfully gripping her daughter, stammered. “Don’t hurt us.”Harvey looked up from the dead man on the floor, his eyes snapping to meet the woman. “I’m here to help you. You two need to come with me. It’s not safe here.”

He knew tossing their husband and father’s body into his spatial ring wasn’t exactly decent, but leaving them to stare at the gruesome visage didn’t feel right either. They both gasped when the body disappeared, and Samantha began crying into her mother’s chest. Harvey turned to walk up the stairs, but paused when neither followed him towards the door.

“What are you waiting for? We killed the minotaurs in our neighborhood, but more might be coming.”

“Minotaurs?” she yelped. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but can you please just leave us alone? Isn’t killing my husband and taking his body enough for you?”

His stomach dropped. He wanted to scream that the only reason they were alive was because of him, but he stopped himself. Looking down at his hands, he saw just how burned and bloodied his armor was. To her, something had run rampant through their home, sliced an axe through the door that cut a massive wound in the love of her life’s back, then some man wearing full platemail burst in to pour a bottle of strange liquid down his throat. For all she knew, he was the one who attacked them in the first place.

Harvey ripped off his helmet, exposing his face before pulling the Helltaur’s corpse out of his ring. His golden hair and eyes pegged him as not human anymore, but he hoped it was close enough that she’d believe him. Dropping the corpse of a dead monster in front of a five-year-old wasn’t his best move, but if it took a little shock to get their feet moving, so be it.

“Listen. My name is Harvey Thorne. My family is from Phoenix, Arizona, and my parents are Cassandra and Steve. They live just down the street. I didn’t kill your husband. I killed the minotaur who was about to barge in and do the same to you. That vial I poured in his mouth was a healing potion…”

“You healed him?” she interrupted.

“I… tried,” Harvey replied. “The point is, we have to move. Now.”

He could tell she was reluctant, especially since getting to the staircase meant walking through a pool of her husband's blood, but she worked up the courage to follow.

“Close your eyes, baby,” she whispered in her daughter’s ear as they pushed through the debris and climbed the stairs.

The neighborhood was quiet, other than the occasional chunk of debris falling. This family lived in the house closest to the entrance and had been the first to be attacked. Harvey could’ve saved them if he’d charged in after the minotaur, but he didn’t regret his decision. In the end, both he and the dead man now held in his spatial ring had done the same thing. Instead of letting Harvey, an unknown threat, inside the bunker, he’d chosen to put his own body between his family and the chaos of the outside world. Harvey made the same decision when he let the minotaurs run rampant, the only difference being that he actually had the power to do something about them.

[Damn angel school. These people should’ve been learning to fight, not sitting in a classroom all day.]

Harvey ushered them through the rubble to where his father and brother were standing guard in their driveway.

“Dad, get these people inside. Tyler, you watch the house. I’m going to clear out the closest neighborhoods,” Harvey instructed.

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They both nodded, Steve taking off his helmet to show the terrified woman an encouraging smile.

“I have a son you might like,” he told Samantha. “A little bit older than you, but I’m sure you’ll be friends.”

“Are you sure you’re ok to go alone?” Tyler asked once the front door closed behind them.

“I’ll be fine,” Harvey nodded.

It took another hour before the alarm bells finally fell silent and the ceaseless screeching of the gargoyles mercifully ended. Harvey methodically cleared out five more neighborhoods, needing to drink one more essence potion in the process. Instead of the invigorating rush of power, that final potion had felt like setting his soul on fire, but he couldn’t kill any Helltaurs without his shotgun. He’d found four more families that had been butchered, their basement sanctuaries turned into tombs. It was a terrible loss, but four families in five neighborhoods meant most people were still alive.

Once he was sure they were safe, he got to work digging out the rubble trapping people underground. He tried to escort people to the church in his own neighborhood, but almost all of them adamantly refused. It was still intact thanks to their early intervention, and it had the Loom, Merit Shops, and Teleporters Heaven would need to respond to the refugee crisis. Most didn’t seem to care about that though, choosing to help dig out their neighbors even when they couldn’t lift entire walls by themselves like Harvey could. They made up for their lacking Strength with many hands, even letting their children help out where they could.

“Careful, buddy,” Harvey said as a boy younger than Max tried to pick up a piece of a broken window. The glass was cutting into his hand, but he still kept pulling. Harvey carefully took it from him and tossed it aside before conjuring an empty orb with Inkbound Ordnance.

“I have a special mission for you,” he said as he poured in two drops of Healing Ink and handed it to the boy. “Find as many hurt people as you can, get them all together, and throw this on the ground.”

“Like this?” the boy said, shattering the orb between them and releasing a storm of healing mist.

“Yes,” Harvey groaned, enduring the pain of channeling even more essence to create another orb. “But wait until you get a lot of hurt people together so you can all share.”

The boy didn’t seem to be listening, too busy staring at his hand where the cut had just disappeared.

“You got it?” Harvey repeated.

“Umm… yeah! Thanks, mister!”

He scampered off, leaving Harvey to finish clearing out the stairwell. He was impressed as every family he saved immediately set to helping another. He knew only a certain type of people had the right legacy to get pulled into this trial, but didn’t expect them all to be such good Samaritans.

Eventually, once the entire neighborhood was accounted for, they made their way to the next. He didn’t have a great concept of time with Heaven’s perpetual daylight, but he expected it was somewhere around noon when he finally walked back into his parents' house.

“I’m home,” he called.

“In here!” Cassandra replied.

Harvey walked into the living room to see his mom and dad standing over an unconscious Tyler. Samantha and Max were playing with toy cars on the floor while Tyler was laid on the couch, so things must not be too dire.

“What happened?” Harvey asked.

“Gained a bunch of levels all at once,” Steve explained. “I think he might’ve even upgraded his Mark.”

“Already? Must have been a lot of levels for him to pass out like this. The same didn’t happen to you?”

“I got my last two Race levels, but I’m capped out,” Steve sighed. “How about you?”

Harvey hadn’t gained a single one, but he assumed the System was waiting until the strain wouldn’t outright shatter his weave.

“Nothing yet, but I’ll let you know.”

Seeing how dirty he was compared to everyone else, he put on his helmet and tipped a vial of cleansing jelly over his head, letting the alchemical miracle eat away the blood and grime that covered him from head to toe. It couldn’t fix the many dents and gashes in his armor, but the self-repair arrays would handle those in time. Piece by piece, he unbuckled his armor and let it disappear into his spatial ring.

“Where does it go?” Samantha’s mother asked sheepishly.

“Oh. I’m putting it all inside this ring,” he answered, holding his hand up for her to see.

“So my husband…”

“Yes,” Harvey replied, saving her from saying the words out loud. He could tell she’d been crying, her eyes red and puffy.

“Harvey, this is Mackenzie,” Cassandra added, wrapping a comforting arm around her. She was around his age, but the five-year-old playing on the floor showed they’d taken very different paths with their early 20’s.

“Nice to officially meet you,” he replied, giving her a sad smile. Nobody really knew what to say, so he jumped at the chance to open the door when someone knocked.

“I’ll get it!”

He pulled it open to see Cash and Celeste.

“We’re in,” she said.

“In what?” Harvey asked, his mind still reeling after all that had happened.

“We're coming to Hell with you.”